Antidepressants

Some family members know I didn’t tell them but I wouldn’t not tell them. Someone saw that I had, there’s a, there was citalopram sitting on the shelf and she’d had it herself and she said to my wife ‘Oh who’s on citalopram?’ and she said ‘They’re Andrew’s.’ So my wife’s family know, they’re the family I see more often we don’t really see my family that often so they know, fine I don’t mind them knowing at all.
 
Well I haven’t, you see I haven’t avoided telling her, and I would tell her but we pop down there for half a day and really, you know, there’s not really discussion, there’s discussion about the kids and stuff but never that, sit down and have half an hour to say how are you getting on...
 
And well I mean if, I don’t mind people knowing and I would tell them but then I don’t know I feel there’s a bit of weakness there. I did tell someone at work and I work very closely with one of the professors, he’s enormously busy and I take on a lot of his load. And I spoke to the administrative worker at work and said did she think I should tell him that I’m depressed and that I’m on this treatment. Particularly as I wasn’t sure how the treatment was going to make me feel and I was at work the first few weeks and I was feeling bloody awful, you know. And she said I don’t know whether you should tell him or not, what do you want to do? And I said I don’t know because I don’t know what I want out of telling people at work, do I want them to treat me differently? Do I want them to take into account some odd behaviour they might have... they had noticed, or do I want them to think that I might not be as productive as I normally am? And I couldn’t answer that question in my head, I didn’t, I couldn’t think through what it is I might want from them. You know if you’ve got a broken leg you can say well I can only.... I need a taxi to work.
 
You can work out what are your limitations.
 
Well yes if I’d been diagnosed with cancer – well, there would be three days a week I can’t come in because I’m on my treatment but I’ll try and get in for the other two but I would appreciate it if people knew. But perhaps I don’t want them to keep asking me about it when they see me in the coffee room really, you know, I mean there are different ways people want to handle it. And I don’t want the ‘Oh’ that ‘Oh.’
 
Yes that sympathy thing.
 
Yes. Nonetheless I do think it would be useful if they knew that somebody like me has been unwell with depression and has also had the treatment so I do feel as it’s a bit of a copout but I didn’t tell my boss and I just kind of tried to handle it as best I could myself.

No well if I tell you that this is a man who last winter fractured his ankle so badly that his foot was facing the wrong way and didn’t want to have a plaster cast.
 
Oh gosh.
 
And in fact insisted that they took the plaster cast off and he just stood up kind of thing and thought he could go back to work. He doesn’t do medication, he doesn’t do doctors, he doesn’t do, all of that with [husband] is a sign of weakness, and it’s a sign of frailty that doesn’t feature in his being. so again I think, interesting I wonder if I dare ask him, not dare ask him but would I bother.
 
Would you have the conversation?
 
What did he think about me still being on tablets? I don’t think I’ve ever asked him no I don’t know, I don’t know.
 
Is it something that you very much keep for yourself?
 
Well it’s just, it’s just ‘me’.
 
You know that…
 
He would pick them up from the doctors for me if he was going past, he would say to me, you know, next week when we are packing to go to [European city] he’d say, you know, have you remembered your tablets, you know. It’s not a bone of contention between us it’s not something that causes problems or it’s just.
 
That’s his way.
 
That’s his view of life, that’s his, that’s what makes him, him and I accept that and I don’t, I don’t have that as something that gets in the way because I accept that that’s his view and I, who am I to say that he’s wrong to think like that you know because he supports me.

So yeah, we’ve, we’ve been together since April and he knew before we started going out that I had problems with depression and I took medication for it and he’s, he’s been, he’s been really great about that stuff.
 
So was that easy or difficult to tell somebody that you barely knew to begin with then.
 
So we were friends before we started going out so I kind of got to know and trust him like that and we talked about it in that context and then got together later and it was actually, it was, so I when I’d, you know, started dating people before there was always the oh God when I am supposed to tell you moment and I, I’ve never been able, good at being that forthcoming with strangers especially so, you know, I’d think oh God well three dates, is it six dates is it when we’re going out a couple of months or you, yes because, you know, at some point you do, I feel almost, you know, it gets to a point when it’s lying by omission, if it’s still a part of your life then you sort of owe it to that person if you’re dating them to be clean about it. But also you don’t want to drop it in on the first date, by the way [inaudible speech]. I do remember with, with one guy that I’d started seeing I decided the easiest thing to do would be to just, you know, take my medication in front of him and he said is that the pill and I said it’s a pill and that was the end of the conversation.
 
Have you had any kind of bad reactions to you telling people that’s what you do?
 
Probably the worst reaction was from my parents.
 
Right.
 
Yeah, I said, mentioned it, I think when I was first prescribed fluoxetine my dad said is that really necessary.
 
Did you talk to him about it?
 
No because it was much, much easier not to really, yeah we just don’t talk about it.
 
Actually some people say that when they do tell other people that they’re taking them they can be quite surprised to hear other people say oh I do to or I know someone who is.
 
Yes, yeah. Now I haven’t, haven’t had a lot of that but what I have had is friends who I’ve, who’ve you know, if I haven’t had long conversations with them about it they’ve at least been aware that that’s my situation and then if they’ve encountered problems themselves later or if they’ve got other close friends that are having those troubles that they come to me to talk about it which I really, really like. I feel like, you know, at least it’s doing other people some good that I’ve had these bad experiences, that you know, and that I’ve had long and extensive enough experience of, you know, treatment and whatever to be able to say look here’s my advice, here’s what I think you should do.
 
I suppose it also encourages you to be able to talk a bit more as well.
 
Yeah, yeah it really does and I, I sort of quite, I really like the fact that people feel that they can talk to me about that, that they can, that they have come up to me and said look I’m feeling like this or I’ve got a friend who’s just started taking this and I know you’ve taken this so what would you, what would you recommend to her, that kind of thing.

I think it’s really tricky socially not to drink I think it’s really tricky socially not to drink I think, you know, it’s tricky not to get into a conversation when someone says, because I went off alcohol for quite a long time actually I went off, I said to people I was going off it for Lent but really I was going of it to stabilise myself around the time of my last sort of big episode and I just completely went off alcohol for a good sort of six or seven weeks. Now I don’t drink a lot now but I might drink once a week and I don’t drink to get drunk but I mean last night for example I’d a friend in town from America and we went out and I maybe had four pints or something like that so, you know, that’s not crazy but obviously I’m not going to drive or anything after that. so I think if you try to limit yourself to once a week or special occasions and if someone offers you a glass of wine with a meal or something I’d say take it but just be careful. And it is, it must be up to the individual person, I mean it’s going to affect different people in different ways, people are going to obviously be bigger physically or not but I, I find I can handle a couple of drinks and it not adversely affect me in terms of my antidepressants.
 
Do you tell other people that you take antidepressants?
 
No.
 
Can I ask why, why would you not?
 
I do sometimes I wouldn’t volunteer the information but if, if it came up in conversation I might mention it but it will depend on people, certainly I mean I have to declare to my employers what medication I’m on which I’ve done but I wouldn’t ever say to the person sitting beside me oh yes I’m on antidepressants and I think, I still think there’s a stigma with mental illness.