• Question: Can depression ever be cured? How effective are anti-depressants? Does the depression return if you stop taking the medication?

    Asked by anon-266918 on 3 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Madeleine Steeds

      Madeleine Steeds answered on 3 Nov 2020: last edited 3 Nov 2020 12:23 pm

      It depends on different people really. I don’t study depression but I have had it for a long time so this is more of a personal response rather than scientific but I hope you find it interesting.

      Different things cause depression. Some people say it’s genetic so your DNA makes you more likely to get it but it can be caused by events in your life. Depending on what causes it I like to think it can be cured but sometimes it’s a lifelong illness and that’s ok. Some people can be a bit mean about mental illnesses because it’s hard to understand what you can’t see but it’s ok to not be ok and to ask for help.

      Anti depressants can be effective but it depends on the type. Some really agree with you and help keep your mood balanced and others can have side effects and not help. It takes time to find the right medicine and the right amount. If you go to therapy you can get past depression without medication and have it not come back but if you haven’t dealt with the cause then it can come back if you stop taking the medication.

      Generally I’m of the opinion that medication can help keep you from getting so depressed you hurt yourself but it’s not a magic cure. It’s important to get treatment in other ways by talking about why you’re sad and working through those feelings. It’s not easy and there’s no guarantee you’ll never be depressed again but it’s very manageable once you find what works for you.

      Like I said this is my opinion not science fact so people may disagree with me but this is how I see my own illness and how I keep on keeping on. Remember if you are sad it’s good to ask for help and you aren’t weak for doing it.

    • Photo: Natalie Jenkins

      Natalie Jenkins answered on 3 Nov 2020:

      Great question, and an excellent answer from Maddy. As scientists we think of questions and how to answer them with science (especially in psychology). When we do this, we try to include people who have experience of the thing we are studying. For example, if we want to find out what can help people with depression feel better, we can ask people with depression to help us design the research. They don’t need to be a scientist, their real life expereinces REALLY help us design good science. Science isn’t just for scientist!

    • Photo: Katie Riddoch

      Katie Riddoch answered on 3 Nov 2020:

      It is possible to recover from mental illness – especially if the person takes time to understand why they are depressed (e.g. trauma, childhood experiences, their work environment, their relationship etc), then works to resolve those problems. This is why therapy is so helpful – a professional can help the person understand why they might be depressed, and work with them to change their environment, adopt healthier habits, and change negative thought patterns (e.g. using CBT or DBT therapy).

      For some people anti-depressants can be really effective at reducing the low mood. However, if the person doesn’t have talking therapy and they stop taking the medication, the symptoms can come back again. In some cases, the medication works so well that people think they are “cured”, and they stop taking it. But often the symptoms will return, as they haven’t dealt with why they are depressed.

      Great question!

    • Photo: Naomi Fisher

      Naomi Fisher answered on 3 Nov 2020: last edited 3 Nov 2020 12:22 pm

      This is such an interesting question which contains a number of assumptions which scientists would try to unpick. Firstly, we would ask what you actually mean by ‘depression’.

      Depression means different things to different people, and there is very little evidence that there is a core disease or disorder which everyone who gets a diagnosis of depression shares. A diagnosis of depression is a description of how a person is feeling and behaving at a particular time. It is a description, not an explanation.

      Lots of people think of depression as an illness which could be ‘cured’ and treated with drugs – but this is only one way to understand depression. Some people feel depressed because the circumstances of their life are so difficult or because terrible things have happened to them. Does it make sense to say that these people are ill or disordered – or might an alternative be to say that when bad things happen, people often feel bad and that this is normal?

      How about if someone is being badly bullied at school and they feel really miserable and low about it – does this mean they have a mental illness and need to be given anti-depressants or offering therapy or does it mean that the bullying should be stopped and then they may well feel better?

      Taking a scientific approach means questioning our assumptions all the time, even those that are part of the question.

    • Photo: Maggi Laurie

      Maggi Laurie answered on 3 Nov 2020:

      Great question! I think as others have mentioned, medication is most effective for depression when used along with other treatments, like talking therapy, or changing the environment to be less stressful. While there are lots of causes of depression as others have mentioned, genetics and familial links to mental health problems also have a large effect on whether someone will have depression, remain depressed, or recover. Rates of depression are rising all over the world and so there’s lots of new work being done to look at how we can cure depression and what types of things are contributing to the increased numbers of people experiencing depression. While there may not be one single set cure, there are things which can help make you feel better and to decrease the likelihood of depression returning. If you are feeling depressed yourself, please do tell someone that you trust about it.

    • Photo: Joanna McParland

      Joanna McParland answered on 3 Nov 2020:

      This is a great question. I don’t study depression myself but know from research that depression can be helped with medication and can come back if people stop taking it. Some people do have other treatments too, such as psychological treatment to help manage negative thoughts. Depression can be accompanied by other things such as physical illness. For example, people who have had pain for a long time can become depressed because of this. Treatment might look to target both of these things.

    • Photo: Parise Carmichael-Murphy

      Parise Carmichael-Murphy answered on 3 Nov 2020:

      You can see you have made lots of us think about how to answer this. As depression is a mental illness, it is not something that can be ‘cured’ in a sense, but it is something that can be relieved. Anti-depressants can help relieve some of the symptoms that people who have depression experience and if you stop taking them these symptoms can come back. Although depression cannot be ‘cured’, people who have it can recover from the illness and anti-depressants can help someone on their road to recovery.

    • Photo: p

      p answered on 4 Nov 2020: last edited 4 Nov 2020 10:30 am

      I think my answer to this would start with another question… which is what does being cured look like? For some people with depression, thinking about getting and feeling better can feel quite overwhelming, so we work in small steps to achieve one thing at a time. I often say to people I’m working with ‘If I had a magic wand, what would you want to be different’ because for each person, improvement in mental health would look and feel different between them. Lots of people I have worked with and provided psychological therapy to have also been taking anti-depressant medication, sometimes when people are really very low it can be difficult for them to access talking therapies, so the medications can help lift their mood to a place where they are able to talk to me and my colleagues. Then we can work together with them to work out what would be helpful to focus on next. This could be a whole range of things like changing unhelpful thoughts, finding coping strategies, working out what is maintaining the problem etc. Some people might continue taking medication for many years as they find this helps them stay at a level where they feel able to manage their mood, whereas other people might take medication for a short while and then not feel the need to anymore. Other people I have worked with who have depression, don’t take medication at all and still find themselves feeling a bit better in themselves without it. I have also worked with people who have tried different medications and they weren’t finding them helpful so they came to psychology for us to try and work out what else might be going on for this person. It’s a really individual choice and our psychiatrists work very hard to find the right medication for someone if that’s what would be best for them. And just coming back to the first point about being cured, sometimes people have a period of low mood or depression and this goes away after some support, other times these periods might return in bouts, and other times someone might have difficulties for a long time and then the work is about managing it ongoing like someone might manage another long term condition like asthma for example. I think it’s also important to note here that we all have mental health, just as we all have physical health, and at any time any one of us could have a difficulty with our mental health. It’s okay to not be okay all the time and it’s important to tell someone you trust if you need some help or someone to talk to. My fellow psychologists have all given very good answers so far, I hope this adds somewhat to help answer your question 🙂

    • Photo: Mona-Lisa Kwentoh

      Mona-Lisa Kwentoh answered on 4 Nov 2020: last edited 5 Nov 2020 10:53 am

      Depression cannot be “cured” but treatment can lead to alleviation and resolution of symptoms. A number of treatments for depression are available including: medication, psychological therapies etc. A good proportion of people diagnosed with depression (evidence suggests approximately 80% – 90%) respond well to antidepressants with patients reporting improvement in their symptoms.
      Patients are advised to continue taking their medication for six or more months after their symptoms have resolved or improved.
      Some patients may experience a return of their symptoms when they stop their antidepressants and some don’t.
      Studies suggest that ensuring some non- medication strategies (avoiding alcohol, decreasing stress, regular exercise and getting enough quality sleep on a regular basis) may help symptoms of depression not returning. For example, some studies have shown that people are far less likely to experience a return of their symptoms after recovering from depression if they exercise three times a week or more. It is thought that regular exercise would lead to the release of the brain chemical serotonin. This could compensate serotonin that would have been available to the brain for the patients taking antidepressants that boost serotonin levels in the brain.
      Some patients are judged to be at a higher risk of experiencing a return of their symptoms on stopping their medication (for example people who have experienced a number of episodes of depression.) These patients are advised to take their medication for a longer period (a patient who has had 3 or more episodes could be advised to take antidepressant medication for at least 2 years after symptoms resolve)
      Patients are also advised to have a chat with their doctor when thinking about stopping their antidepressant medication.

    • Photo: Simona Skripkauskaite

      Simona Skripkauskaite answered on 5 Nov 2020:

      At the moment we do not really know enough about depression to know exactly why depressive episodes occur and whether it, technically, could be cured or not. Most people, sadly, will experience a depressive episode at some point in their lives (some will have a major depressive disorder, but many others will have seasonal or postpartum depression, or simply experience similar symptoms due to grief or heartbreak). Most of those episodes can be managed, as others said, with self-care, therapy, counselling, support groups, and medication. For some of us that may be the only depressive episode we experience and we never have to deal with it again, for others this might sadly be a repeated experience.

    • Photo: Olga Luzon

      Olga Luzon answered on 11 Nov 2020:

      Yes, depression can be cured. From the type of therapy I do, cognitive behavioural therapy, depression is a response to a way of seeing and acting in a particular situation, often we are not in control of the context, but we can think about things in many ways, and respond to situation, even very difficult ones life throw at us, in many different ways… we know that antidepressants can help, but we also know that doing exercise, sleeping well, eating healthy, socialising, keeping active and ensure every day you do something that gives you a sense of achievement or a sense of enjoyment are just as powerful if not more… great question!

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