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Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah…

– Leonard Cohen

Relapsing in brain illness is the pits.  The prodrome, as it starts creeping into our awareness, is worse than knowing we are about to walk into a spider web with the spider and his dinner still in it.  It’s so horrible that even before the prodrome hits, imagining a relapse can trigger foreboding and anticipatory anxiety.

What will I do if I…?  

Dear God no…

Recently we did a brief series on ECT and discussed how ECT can improve brain health, signal neurogenesis and trigger healing.  This brought many of us to wonder about what causes brain damage.  It became apparent that many of us had forgotten that brain illness, in fact, damages the brain.  We still have a hard time, despite all our progressive activism and awareness, believing to the core that the brain is human, that emotions and behaviors come from the brain and that a diseased brain is what generates disease symptoms as seen in emotions and behaviors.  We still have a hard time believing that the brain responds to medication, much like the liver does.

What?!  Depression causes brain damage?

What?  

Now compound that with the spider’s cousin, Medication-For-Life, and you’ll see us doing a funny walk-hop-dance in the dark to avoid what we wish we weren’t getting into.

The wonderful bit about all this is that staying on medications, even for life, is the best way to dodge the worst of it.  Sure, even with medications, as prescribed, compliant and all that fluffy five-star behavior, we still relapse.  “Depression should be considered as a continuous rather than an episodic process,” as stated so well by French biomedical expert, Vidailhet P.   But, (this is really good news,) when we relapse, we do not drop as fast, we do not fall as low and we do not hit as hard when medication compliant.  Staying on medication is prophylactic against those miseries.  Staying on medication is protective against progressive brain disease and it’s deteriorating effects.  Staying on medication is friendly.

…Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

–Leonard Cohen

Question:  What have you noticed that staying on your medication has done for you?  How do you manage to stay on it even when you don’t want to?  

When you’ve come off of it and relapsed, how was it different from when you relapsed while still maintaining your medication therapies?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Stay on your medication.

Related articles

• For depression, relapsers go to the front of the brain (esciencenews.com)
• Signs of Recurring Depression Revealed in Brain Scans (livescience.com)
• Relapse and Depression (lovemeorhatemeitsreallyme.wordpress.com)
• Spider Webs: A Halloween Reminder of How Our Brains Work – by Dr. Sara Sawtelle (brainwaresafari.wordpress.com)
• Chronic Relapse Branding Campaign Launched Nationwide (prweb.com)
• Potential adverse effects … [J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/w4jIrk
• Recurrent depression: episodes neurotoxicity and … [Encephale. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/uHvpGS
• Major depressive disorder: factors of risk, vulne… [Encephale. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/rNyvyv
• Recurrent depression in the elderly: what cogniti… [Encephale. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/u8g2oK
• Depressive recurrence: cognitive alterations and … [Encephale. 2010] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/tPqpPZ Vidailhet P.
• Toxic effects of depression on brain functio… [Am J Psychiatry. 2008] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/rGzgFL
• Recurrent depression: patient characteristics, cl… [CNS Spectr. 2006] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/terokS
• Preventing recurrent depression: long-term… [J Clin Psychiatry. 2007] – PubMed – NCBI http://1.usa.gov/sgz2Iy