Interview 18
Age at interview: 20
Age at diagnosis: 19
Brief Outline: Became depressed while looking after a friend with depression. Believes Seroxat contributed to her suicide attempt. With counselling and new medication (venlafaxine 150mg/day) she is getting better.
Background: A 20 year old woman living and studying in a university town in the Midlands. While experiencing isolation and bullying in secondary school, she was able to make a close friend at university. (Played by an actor.)
More about me...
Describes how she feels uncomfortable with the caring attention from her GP and so forgets things...
Describes how she feels uncomfortable with the caring attention from her GP and so forgets things...
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It was just unnerving having that amount of attention focused on me.
After starting Seroxat (paroxetine), found she was 'sleeping too much', felt dazed, had 'head...
After starting Seroxat (paroxetine), found she was 'sleeping too much', felt dazed, had 'head...
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And I would be sure that I'd seen sudden movements out of the corner of my eyes, and often at the same time I would feel that my heart just jumped several inches, you know, it would feel like it would just leap, and stop beating for a second or two and then keep going, you know, it would make me jump.
And I also, during that time, had two hallucinations, which were very unpleasant; they were more or less the same'they both happened when I just glanced at someone, and both times it was one of my friends. I'd been looking at something else and I'd just look up and just for a second as, as I turned my eyes on them, the first time, I thought I saw a skull instead of a face, and it was.... it was like I could see the skull under their face, and the face came back again. And the second time, when I looked at someone for a moment I saw them, you know, in my mind, I saw them lying with their head smashed in.
Believes Seroxat contributed to her suicide attempt. With counselling and new medication ...
Believes Seroxat contributed to her suicide attempt. With counselling and new medication ...
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But then I would always think I did have another option, I could take my life into my own hands and you know sometimes, sometimes I would feel ignored or unloved, and then I could imagine how people would feel if I did kill myself, and you know, it would remind me that people did love me' And for many years I hadn't had any suicide thoughts at all, and I had certainly never thought of cutting myself, but while I was on Seroxat, I did start to get sudden images in my head of you know, cutting long gashes in myself, and just... just seeing the blood running everywhere and, you know, the feeling of compulsion to do it.
You know, feeling a need to see that, and I did used to get images coming in my head of lying in a blood- filled bath or jumping into a river or off a tall building. And those images would just sit in my head for a long time until they just melted away, and....sometimes they left me feeling a bit disturbed, but usually they didn't cause any emotions in me'.It was like.... like my personality had been withdrawn and my rational mind had been overwhelmed, or insulated or cut off in some way and I was just purely running on immediate needs....
She saw a university-based counsellor and was relieved to be able to talk about anything she...
She saw a university-based counsellor and was relieved to be able to talk about anything she...
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Is it that you didn't tell your friends about the counsellor, or about being depressed?
Both. I think I felt that I wanted to keep them both apart, and that I was going there to help myself understand what was going on, and you know, get help, but I wanted to keep it separate from my normal life. I was..... I think I was worried about how I might react to.... I was worried about people seeing me differently'
You said the counselling was helpful - in what way was it helpful?
It was a big relief to have someone who I could tell anything I wanted, anything that was bothering me, and not worry about what they might think about it or how it might affect our relationship. And you know, it also helped to feel that I was doing something about my problems as well, so...
What did you like about the counselling?
Just the friendliness, and I always looked forward to the weekly session, and it, you know, helped me sort out my thoughts and feelings, describing them to someone else.
Having taken the antidepressant 'Seroxat' she says could make better sense of her experience of...
Having taken the antidepressant 'Seroxat' she says could make better sense of her experience of...
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So when you discovered this website, what did you do next?
Well I read through a whole lot of descriptions by other people and went away and thought about it a lot. And I kept going back to see if there were any updates or anything, and in the end I sent an email with my experiences, just to, you know, add my contribution and back up what the other people were saying.
And because all the experiences were slightly different, because some people had some side-effects, and other people had others and some had a mixture, you know perhaps, perhaps it was in some ways significant, the precise reaction that I'd had. And it.... it did help me to think much more clearly about what had happened, and to think from stage to stage, and to... actually I hadn't thought about the fact that all this had happened so quickly after I'd started to take Seroxat. It was just like I hadn't been thinking.