How does one deal with a spouse who feels that taking an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication is unnecessary and equates with drug abuse?

If you were diabetic would he object to insulin? If you had high blood pressure would he object to blood pressure meds? Sometimes medication to balance out the brain chemistry is necessary. Would he believe an explanation to that end from a physician?

Whatever you do DON’T give them up, nobody who has not been through this knows how depressed or highly anxious people feel. I have often heard people say “It’s all in the mind and you can get over it with sheer willpower.” They couldn’t be more incorrect. You can talk to him directly and make him understand, if he doesn’t, just go on taking them since THEY are what keeps you going. Openly(preferably) or secretly, do what you have to do!

Sounds like you might want to start talking to a divorce attorney. Find out what your options are.

Well, let me poke a stick into a bees nest, but I feel like your spouse in many ways. My 17-year-old granddaughter is taking anti-anxiety medication instead of learning to deal with stress and worry. I remember being a nervous wreck when I was her age – you know (do my friends like me, will I pass that math test, will my hair turn green if I dye it.) It is a part of life and a valuable life-skill to learn how to deal with (what I would call) LIFE!

I especially worry because her mother (my daughter) is living on a cocktail of anti-anxiety and anti-depression pills. She is a recovered drug addict. Also, I have a sister who was fond of drugs and now is not only hooked on anti-anxiety and anti-depression pills, but also pain killers and anti-psychotic medications. I went to see her recently after not being around her for 6 years, and I swear, I am sure she could have been diagnosed clinically insane. But, now her doctor has added hormones to her arsenal, and she seems better – in a psyco kind of way.

@Skaggfacemutt while I honestly respect what you are saying, I insist on the fact that people who have not been through real anxiety, debilitating fear/panic, don’t know how horrific it can be. I agree that it would be better to learn to deal with our issues ourselves, with no external help, but in many cases that is simply not possible. I wouldn’t wish it in on my worst enemy! Unfortunately, even after so much info on depression and anxiety, what can not physically be seen, cannot always be understood!

First of all, I think that your spouse is ‘somewhat’ correct in his concern: I believe that many mood-altering drugs are tremendously over-prescribed in Western (and particularly American) society.

But that doesn’t mean that I agree that all mood-altering or psychotropic drugs are over-prescribed or used recreationally. I take you at your word: they’re necessary for you to have any sense of well-being and basic health.

So I think your spouse needs to get some education. I presume that you’ve tried, but somehow (maybe the doctor?) he needs to gain some understanding of your need and your situation and the actual effects of the drugs.

Most people would benefit simply from doing some work – or play – to occupy their bodies and minds. I guess that’s not enough for you, and I accept that.

Has your husband been with you to the doctor and listened to what the doctor has to say about the medication and your need for it? Does your husband notice a difference in you when you are off the medication? Would your husband be willing to go to counseling to try to get passed this issue? Aside from him being educated and gaining an understanding of mental illnesses and disorders, there isn’t much else you can do to change his view on this. I hope this gets better for you.

Both of my parents suffered from clinical depression, so I got a double dose of depressive genes. As a result, I’ve suffered with severe, untreatable clinical depression for my entire life. I’ve never been able to hold a job for longer than two years – six months was the average – because I would be struck with a major depressive episode and be unable to stand up, much less go to work. The result of this has been a lifetime of misery and grinding poverty. I finally ended up receiving a disability pension, but it took me decades to apply (and when I finally did apply, it took me 2 years of appeals and $1000 of my own money to pay an advocate to assist me in order to get it) because they deliberately make the process difficult, humiliating, and punitive in order to dissuade people from applying.

The problem with depression is that while it can be verified very easily with a brain scan, it can’t be seen from the outside. I’ve been told all my life that I’m “just lazy,” that I should “just get up and show some willpower.” No one would ever say that to someone sitting in a wheelchair, but because my illness is in my brain where they can’t see it, I am told that I’m malingering or a just a bum. You need to understand that major depression is not only real and debilitating, but dangerous. Most doctors now treat major depression as a medical emergency which requires aggressive treatment. This is because depression causes permanent brain damage in the long term which eventually makes treatment of any kind ineffective – as it has become for me.

Depression doesn’t mean feeling sad. It is a serious physiological condition which can render a person utterly disabled and incapable of even the most minimal self-care. There have been entire weeks where I could not stand and had to piss into a bucket, crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees because I couldn’t stand. That’s not “laziness,” it’s a serious and crippling disability. And if your husband doesn’t understand that, then you need to kick his ignorant, empathy-lacking arse to the curb. Major depression is hard enough to endure, you don’t need some rugged individualist meathead standing on the sidelines making it worse.

@SmashTheState I totally agree with you! You could not have given a more accurate picture. It is so debilitating, that it prevents you from reaching your full potential in life, in fact it strips you of all potential you may have!

It is very hard for me to understand that kind of disability. Also, you have to understand that most of us know or have heard of scads of people who use anxiety/depression/mental and physical illnesses as an excuse to not hold down a job, clean their house, or raise their kids. It’s like the boy that cried wolf. Real depression must be very rare as I have never known anybody with the symptoms you are describing.

Then there are those who function seemingly normally, go to work, get through the day, smile and seem to be perfectly normal people, with no worries. Others who don’t know them well, have NO idea of the kind of hell they are going through!

Which brings up the question – what hell are we talking about? I mean, is something really bad going on in this person’s life, or is it just some kind of imagined hell? I mean, I have experienced depression before, brought on by a relationship going south or something terrible happening. I just can’t wrap my head around being depressed for no particular reason.

Besides things going wrong in life, it is genetic, just like diabetes and other diseases. Misunderstood in many cases, misdiagnosed, overused and abused, YES – but for those who really suffer from it, it is very real, a nightmare from which you never really awaken and quite honestly, without medication, I know that many true sufferers would rather be dead!

In extreme cases, it would be “better” to suffer from a physical disease that is controllable and traceable than deep depression. Most people who suffer from serious depression welcome death as a merciful break.

@Skaggfacemutt : Situational depression is very different from clinical, medical (or whatever the official term is) depression. One is a type of deep sadness, which normally will alleviate after a suitable amount of time, and/or specialized counseling. The other kind can be caused by imbalances in brain chemistry. You feel different if you don’t eat properly, or don’t get enough rest, things that can skew your chemical balances. Imagine not being able to come out of it at all, because, like a diabetic, the appropriate chemical balances cannot be maintained without outside intervention.

@Skaggfacemutt I think what you’re talking about – and the kind of thing that only the patient herself with professional diagnosis can determine – is where she falls on the continuum of “get outside and do something to feel better” to “get this person to the ER stat”.

We can’t judge that, the husband can’t judge it, the patient herself can’t judge that. Only an experienced, competent and engaged physician can tell after a thorough examination and interview.

Thanks for the first-person account, @SmashTheState. Short of suicide, I had no idea that depression was that debilitating.

@Skaggfacemutt “Feeling sad” is not major depression. Major depression is a brain dysfunction which can range from merely miserable to completely crippling. No one is certain about the causes or even the mechanism for depression, but the leading theory is that it’s caused by a lack of a particular chemical in the brain. Normally, when you think, electrical signals are transmitted between neurons by jumping a gap between connecting dendrites. This is a chemical reaction, and after the signal passes there is a refractory period during which the dendrites “reset” to pass another signal. It’s currently believed that the mechanism for depression is a shortage of a chemical which allows the dendrite to reset. It makes thinking slow, painful, and difficult.

Try to imagine what it would be like if every thought was tiring, like physical exercise. This is what it’s like to be in the grip of a major depressive episode. You literally can’t think. Everything seems foggy. And if it gets bad enough, you are prevented from controlling you body. The act of standing, for example, becomes too difficult for me when I’m depressed, because it requires the fast coordination of a lot of different muscles. In order to get around, I have to either stagger drunkenly from wall to wall and object to object to support myself, or crawl on my hands and knees. During particularly bad depressive episodes, I’ll sleep 18+ hours a day. During my worst times, I’ve sometimes slept 24 hours in a row. That’s not something a normal person without major depression is even physically capable of doing.

@MoaningMyrtle : We seem to veered pretty far off track from your original Q, sorry. I hope you got some good thoughts before it devolved.

@SmashTheState Thank you for your honest sharing. When not taking medication I am overwhelmed so easily. I was not like this a few years ago. I avoid answering the door or email and, before the mild anti-anxiety would drink to remove the anxious feeling. Drinking, of course, has its own set of issues. But oddly drinking is socially acceptable while these tiny pills are considered abuse to people like my spouse.

@Skaggfacemutt is it possible that the drug abuse in your family was, in fact, an attempt by your relatives to self medicate for depression?

Break up. He is ignorant and not going to change.

@JilltheTooth perhaps the lady’s husband should read all this and he may get an idea of how serious an issue it is!

@JilltheTooth Not at all- This is what I need to hear. I have sent a message to the moderator asking to not remove anything.

Back to the original problem – I really don’t think your spouse is the type to deal with your condition in the long run. In fact, he sounds a lot like my father, who brought us up to see weakness as the most shameful of failures. He also has the “suck it up” philosophy and would see drug dependency of any kind, a crutch. Knowing my father like I do, I don’t think anything you do is going to help. If he was the type that would be open to talk to a doctor or get professional information on your condition, then you wouldn’t be having the problems you are having in the first place.

@Skaggfacemutt don’t overlook that there may be an element of “protesting too much” on the part of the spouse, too. How many times have we all seen various people, whether public figures or in our own lives, protest vehemently against actions taken by others – which they were secretly doing themselves? Sometimes that protest is a way to warn others away from “the bad actions I’m taking myself that I don’t want you to follow.”

It might be worthwhile to open a discussion with him about why he feels “so” strongly. I have my own opinions of over-medication based on my general reading, but when a family member was prescribed for anti-depressants, I accepted that as necessary. I didn’t have such a strong anti-medication opinion as @MoaningMyrtle‘s spouse. Even though “the general public” might be over-medicated, I knew that in our own situation medication at minimum was necessary for survival. It could be that he simply doesn’t have the empathy – or @MoaningMyrtle hasn’t got the communication ability (maybe because of the illness) – to allow or to make him understand.

I understand the concerns of your spouse in that psychiatric medications are most definitely over prescribed and anti-anxiety medication quite hard to come off. However, like @ZEPHYRA I agree that unless one has experienced crippling anxiety/depression, they cannot possibly understand how difficult it is. There’s quite a difference between life’s ups and downs and getting on with those than that of depression and anxiety. Would it not be better to take medication and be able to function in the world than to put a hold on one’s life and merely exist?
There’s so many arguments for and against medication, but ultimately unless a person goes through this, I don’t believe they can contemplate how difficult/debilitating it truly is. I’m not sure how I’d handle this situation, but lying and hiding medication is not the answer. At least, I don’t believe so. Surely, that’s just adding to your anxiety tenfold? I would sit down and talk to him and of course, tell him to educate himself on the matter.

A lot of people have really skewed views on psychological medicine. They think different rules apply to the brain than to other organs. The fact is, they don’t. Your brain can be sick just like your stomach or your kidneys and just like any other organ it needs medicine when it is. If he is is putting you down for taking medication you need, that is a big problem. If he refuses to budge, I would consider leaving. Your spouse should be your supporter when dealing with health concerns, he should be on your side, not putting you down. I would have a talk with him about what it means to you, how it makes you feel, when he behaves this way and just how seriously it is affecting you.

@MoaningMyrtle, is there anyway you can get your doctor to speak to him? Would it help if someone else explains how you are feeling and why taking medication is so important? Obviously, you need your meds and you should keep taking them. I can only imagine the added strain this is placing on you. I hope you can find some way to educate him so he is more understanding.

Also, Skaggfacemutt, I was quite disturbed by your comment “you have to understand that most of us know or have heard of scads of people who use anxiety/depression/mental and physical illnesses as an excuse to not hold down a job, clean their house, or raise their kids. It’s like the boy that cried wolf.” Unless you are that person’s medical professional, you cannot judge whether individuals are or are not suffering from depression or any other mental health condition. The last thing someone suffering from depression needs is to have the added burden of having to demonstrate to anyone but their doctors that there is really something wrong with them.

Thank you for sharing your story @SmashTheState.

This is not a case of drug abuse, but a case of spousal abuse. Your husband needs far more help than you do. If you don’t want to break up, you have to find a way for your husband to get professional counseling. This is serious. Find a person you trust and discuss your next steps.

@Bellatrix I am sorry that my perspective disturbs you, but I know (and know of) many people who abuse the system by getting on SSI with claims of phantom illnesses and depression/anxiety is one of the favorites because it can’t be disproven.

” who feels that taking an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication is unnecessary and equates with drug abuse?” That’s me. I recently had an incident that caused me great anxiety and the doctor prescribed some pills to help me avoid nightmares and self-destructive thoughts. I think that I am now addicted and cannot sleep without them. It turns out that I’m right because I tried last night and didn’t sleep at all. Further I feel sick and upset, I consider that withdrawal symptoms. Frankly, I’d rather suffer the consequences of not taking the pills or any pills than to become chemically dependent and suffer additional side effects.

I don’t, however, impose my opinions on my wife. Frankly I think that every psychiatrist is a lot crazier than I am.

@Ron_C Sure, many medications require weaning to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Do you really think that designates use of these medications as drug abuse? What about ones that are prescribed for a physical problem rather than a mental/emotional one, would you object to them as well?

Of course I respect your right to make this decision for yourself, and appreciate the fact that you do not impose that opinion on others. I’m just curious about your stance as stated.

@Mariah I have prescribed Oxycodone pills (10 mg) that I cut in half for when the pain gets too bad. I, hate taking them. If I take it too early, I get a drunk feeling, if I wait too long, nothing happens, no relief.
I worry that at my age (64+) that they will affect my thinking and abilities using logic. The problem is that I, and many others, are trying to balance pain relief with clarity of thought.

After my hospital experience, I never want to be at the mercy of a doctor more concerned with his status, than my well-being. I am afraid of hospitals and terrified of nursing homes.