I've done CBT and DBT as I have mental illness. Both are good. I don't know if they could have done any good without my medication. But they are not short term. Nothing is. A person with a depressive disorder has to work on it and can slip. It is often, if not mostly, a chronic condition unless it is brought on by a tragedy, such as the loss of a loved one. I have spent forty years in the mental health community and getting and staying better and maintaining good health requires tuneups and continuous work. This is NOT a bad thing. It's just that when you start to feel down again, and few depressive episodes that have been intractable such as this young mans, never return, you need reminders to use your coping skills and DBT/CBT and whatever new methods will come out in the future. It is easy to forget them when are feeling down.Depression tend to be a recurrent condition so it is very positive to learn how to handle it, much like diabetes.
I personally feel CBT and DBT (which a bias toward DBT) are very good, but unworkable if you are still in a state of depression. It is hard to explain unless one has actually dealt with this degree of depression. Mine started as a little girl, but really hit a bad slide at thirteen and continued until I found the right medications along with good therapy and a self-help group and a tremendous desire to improve. I hope the poster's young man has the same intensity to heal that I did. I still slip, but wipe off the seat of my pants, bo back for extra help, because I never did quit therapy, and I hold up my chin again. Therapy is not a weakness. It is a strength to ask for help. Like the diabetic example, it is a physical brain disorder and should be cared for lovingly by the person who cares about himself/herself just like if he she had diabetes or epilepsy.
It is paramount for somebody with severe depression to be evaluated and diagnosed by a psychiatrist, the MD guy who has the smarts and knowledge to figure out if it is just depression or bipolar or something else. To be honest, psychiatry is an inexact science however and I have had many diagnoses...msot of them with some merit....unipolar depression, manic depression (I don't think this is so), anxiety disroder (yes), panic disorder (yes), borderline traits (this was one doctor and iffy), soft neurological signs that are NOT Aspergers but mimic some of it (yes)...lots of stuff that I had to learn how to deal with one step at a time. Oops...forgot disassociation/depersonalization, one of my scariest symptoms of anxiety. I spent ten weeks in a psychiatric hospital when I was 23 back when your insurance actually let you get well before you were discharged (although I'd say I was better, not well).
I had a family that dismissed my mental illness as bad behavior and to this day, although I am functioning well, both my brother and sister do not forgive my infrequest and mostly early-in-life mentally ill behavior and my mother hated me all my life because sometimes I acted like I had a mental illness (duh), although usually I did not. Time and hard work were the key to getting better, but I refuse to back down and discount my medication. I always refused to take anything that fogged my brain or made me feel like I wasn't me...I was very proactive in my treatment. But I also refused to give up on me. Whatever it took.
This is obviously my experience. I have been in so many self-help groups and have spoken to so many people who have had mental health problems and we struggle and we work HARD and if people who were not mentally ill knew how hard we worked, I think they would respect us more for pushing on so hard. Life is hard. Life is harder with a mental illness. But, if you are willing to follow treatment and also help yourself in other ways (exercise, good eating habits, sleep, extra therapy when you need it, reading great self-help books, self-help groups, catching a slide before you actually slide) you can live an awesome life. I feel my life is awesome with my only regret that my family of origin did not and never will understand the trials of mental illness. I have done so well that my real family (husband and kids) have not seen mental illness in me. I am able to ask for help and control it before it shows. At one time, I could not.
Poster, in your son's case, I think you are compassionate not to make him leave your house. I do believe he is mentally ill and I also believe with all my heart that he can recover if he is willing to do the hard work it takes. I will let you and him deal with the medication question. It saved my life. But that is an individual decision we all have to decide upon.
