Does depression and anxiety ever get better?

Have you tried exercise? physical therapy? a dietitian to make sure your diet includes certain nutrients? Not a quick fix but help.

I don't know your situation, but for me, depression has typically been caused by repressed anger.

Look deep within yourself and see if maybe this is true of you, too. If it is, you can work on resolving (and dissolving) that anger, which may go way, way back.

Once you are freed from that horrible burden, you may find that your depression eases.

Life is short. Don't short-circuit happiness.

@donhan
I have an outstanding Mayo PA medication specialist. She works with psychiatry department at Mayo. She works as team with my other doctors. When she prescribes something it is always with the coordination with my other doctors and specialist.

If you think Psychiatrist is not doing what is best for you please consider seeing a different one. I am not sure if you are close to a Mayo Clinic or other major medical institution but if you are think about a second opinion.

Regarding what you can do for yourself. I found that exercise and hobbies that take you to something you enjoy does wonders for not only your physcical health but mental health. If you read my posts I always mentioned FDR during WWII. He would make time each day to work on his stamp collection that brought him great joy. He was also a avid swimmer.

What I suggest is finding (with your doctors okay) and execise you like and enjoy it. If not an exerciser consider a hobby that you may like and do it. Anything that you enjoy doing is going to help with your anxiety and depression.

What do I do? I do water aerobics 5 days a week. I bike 2 times a week, and swim 1-2 times a week. I find it really makes me concentrate on the activity. Doing water aerobics sometimes makes the males on MCC raise an eyebrow but water aerobics is as hard as you make it. You exercise to music and really have to watch instructor so you concentrate on that not your depression.

I take only one medication now for my PTSD anxiety/panic disorder. It is called Escitilopram (spell) and has really helped with the depression. I was on Trazodone for sleeping and Xanac for anxiety. I have been able to ween myself of those to a "as needed" basis.

My PTSD that developed into anxiety/panic disorder was a combination of life events. Vietnam service, deadly force as a police officer, and being shocked by my ICD/Pacemaker 5 times in a 24 hour period. Depression is in my case a feeling of hopelessness and fear. With the medication and my exercise routine I am doing very well.

I handled prostate cancer in 2023, deaths in family, with normal feelings. I think having a healthy lifestyle and doing things you enjoy goes a log way to mental health.

I am opoid and alcohol free going on 5 years and have been on a variety of drugs and active in therapy. I am presently prescribed a low dose of mirtazapine. It has been a roller coaster of sleepness nights and anxious emotions that make me doubt my sanity. Could this drug be causing such a change in me? I am just so uncomfortable and not near as content as I was when first in recovery. I get so anxious at bedtime my skin crawls with worry and unreasonable thought.

Hello @tire,

Five years of being off of opioids and alcohol is a big accomplishment. It must be both concerning and frustrating to be experiencing these new symptoms and worrisome thoughts.

@tire, have you had a chance to share these new experiences and possible side-effects of your new mirtazapine prescription with your provider? You also mentioned you are active in therapy, have you been able to share these new feelings of being less content with your therapist as well?

I have suffered from Major Depressive Disorder for the better part of my life. I never believed it would get better, but after a lot of work and therapy lam definitely better. Talk therapy is one of the most helpful things there are. If you have trouble finding the right one try and try again. Don't worry about leaving one therapist for another it can be necessary. Keep going and set yourself up for the work. Therapists don't do the work. They guide you. I am so sorry you are going through this. I hope for the best for you.

In this life, there are more reasons to be depressed and anxious than not. One way or another, we are assaulted, parents, bullies, bosses, IRS. Many assaults are traumatic, overwhelming the nervous systems and the rest of the body. We "re-wire" to adapt, but that re-wired person is uncomfortable as not being who he or she really is. The results of this are SYMPTOMS which get classified and "treated" by mental health professionals and big pharma. $$$$
It is not being sick. It is our defense mechanisms protecting us.
Our responsibility is to ourselves: To soul search for who we really are (In Zen it is called your original face); find out what is joyful and do it; selflessly help and be kind to others, which helps with your own healing.
Carl Jung said you haven't ruined you life with mistakes. It was all anschlag - TRYING.

Congratulations on 5 years!! I've been off alcohol 3 years. My favorite therapy is walking. It gives me time to think about my immediate surroundings and how my body feels at that moment. I have neuropathy in my feet and am always aware of how they feel as I progress across various surfaces. This keeps me in the moment and provides a type of mindfulness that helps relieve anxiety. This also provides physical activity that allows me to sleep much better than no activity. I've noticed a major difference in my mood and sleep if I don't get my steps in. Walking has allowed me to lose 70 pounds and lower my blood pressure which in turn lowered my anxiety. It provides a very low impact exercise that improves circulation and can be done almost anywhere. The only equipment needed is good shoes and a place to walk. Taking different routes allows new experiences, smells, sounds, and people along the way. This works as an exercise in neuroplasticity as well as mindfulness. Motion is medicine. Keep moving forward.

I'm the same age and suffered anxiety and depression most of my life, I'm also on a lot of medication, I'm stuck and don't know a way out apart from trying to accept the anxiety and that some days are better than others. Trying to eat healthy and exercise even though I don't feel motivated to do it, and I try to think of others instead of being in my own head. Sorry I couldn't of been any help.

It's interesting that you see a physiologist. Have you tried a psychiatrist? One of the things they're specifically trained to do is monitor patients on their drugs and pay attention to what might or might not be working. Other doctors not so much, which isn't their fault, they're just working in their area of training and expertise.

A long story: I've had lifelong cyclic depression and then a few years ago spiraled into a deep depressive darkness that was unlike anything I've ever known and that ultimately got so scary it landed me in the hospital. Which is what led me to the psychiatrist.

I was diagnosed as bipolar 2, which I feel is likely a correct assessment because, after reading about it, it described too much of my life to dismiss (stay away from social media for medical information; stick to Mayo, Stanford, BMJ, NIH, and other such sources).

It took a while, and it required some personal decisions I made about the medication I was on (Effexor), which proved to be the culprit for the major decline I had suffered (it's a rare but documented side effect, which is why the medication carries a black box warning; I found one peer reviewed study on the rare response I suffered that was like reading a biography of my life on Effexor, and that prompted me to advocate for myself). But even before I went off of it, my psychiatrist already knew things weren't working and was considering the next step. We probably would have eventually gotten there even if I hadn't figured it out first.

We made a switch, in my case to lamotrigine, which was initially a drug to treat epilepsy but has since been approved for bipolar 2, which appears to originate in the same region of the brain. Getting off the medication driving the worst of my symptoms, the scary ones, led to an almost immediate recovery from the serious and potentially fatal darkness that had landed me in the hospital. With that out of the way, I began the lamotrigine, which requires an introductory period of about six weeks.

I was in with my counselor yesterday and told her I just marked the first full year of my entire life without a single depressive episode. And I'm 60. Depression dates back to grade school. She said the progress she's seen is remarkable.

I don't believe that a general physician would have had the knowledge to try lamotrigine since use of it for certain forms of depression is not widely known. And even if it was, since I hadn't been diagnosed bipolar 2 until the hospital stay, my GP would have probably upped the antidepressant he had me on, and that was ironically making me cripplingly depressed.

I'm not saying your case is the same as mine, and I'm not saying that lamotrigine is the cure for you. I'm not dispensing medical advice. I am recommending you try a psychiatrist, however, because I simply would not have gotten where I am without her knowledge and our discussion about what to try next. I'm now basically in a good mood every day. Something I've never known before. Look at my screen name, chosen over a year ago; the depressed part is gone, but the second half is more than true - I'm not only not dead, I'm very much alive. And she probably saved my life given how far I had slid and how quickly I was continuing to slide.

If you haven't tried that route, I'd suggest doing so. It takes time, it's not immediate, but if it works, all I can say is that in my case at least, Wow! 100%.