Hello, i'm mentally ill.. and also British

[Aractus]

Interesting introduction.

I had to write a boring essay on major depressive disorder a few weeks ago. For those who don't know, major depression is the most common clinically diagnosed depressive disorder. Once a patient has had it for two years they are re-diagnosed as having persistent depressive disorder. Pharmacotherapy is by far the most cost-effective medical intervention; and treatment from all forms of health care (pharmacotherapy, counselling/psychotherapy, proactive care, etc) is only around 50% effective (see Andrews et al. 2004). One in three patients do not respond positively to any form of treatment. Partly because patients, such as yourself, need another disorder treated first before the depression treatment will work.

The distinction between major depression and persistent depression is fairly arbitrary. The distinction allows healthcare workers to claim that all people who suffer from major depression are suffering a non-chronic form of depression, since 100% of them will eventually be diagnosed as being free from it; unfortunately for people such as yourself you don't get diagnosed as being well, you get diagnosed with persistent depression and the treatment plan then reflects whatever they think is best for the treatment of persistent depression rather than the treatment of major depression.

Anyway good luck, and I hope you work out what is causing your depression and are able to address it effectively.