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[ChairmanPoo]

That' says that  your country's healthcare service being in disarray, not that visiting a psychologist is a better option than visiting a psychiatrist

[Gabeux]

we can say its both because if i fail i get scolded and insulted at, while they wish i was a person they envisioned and not the me today.

i have spent my waking moments trying to appease them but it seems like i always screw something up and then suddenly i am the worst failure ever.

so i believe i am such.

I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoteurapist or anything. The closer I get to is to a psychopath, I guess.
This will probably be a long post because I don't usually post these things publicly.

When I was a kid, I was always - daily - compared to anyone else. I was never good enough as someone else's kid, or to a cousin, and I was always NOT doing whatever I was 'supposed' to do, or not being what I was supposed to be.
Anything I'd do, like writing a story, drawing something, building something with LEGOs or whatever, would be, 95% of the time, met with a "meh" face.

This made me dive deep into videogames and also ignore real life. Together with the fact that my friends at school would betray me weekly (trying to frame me for doing crap or almost-criminal stuff, etc), and the fact that both teachers and students didn't give a crap about anything, soon turned my suicide contemplation ("No one gives a damn. Maybe I should just leave or kill myself, because I'm done."), into an actual attempt at my life when I climbed to the rooftop and sat on the edge of my apartment building.
Given that I almost fainted (fear of heights), I almost had no choice in the matter - but I managed to throw myself back as I got weak, since for a second I could remember the good things in my life, like (even earlier) childhood memories from sincere moments, and all the care, attention and worry my grandmother had with me - because she simply knew something was up (and wrong) with me for a long time.

I never visited a therapist because everyone I know in my region who visits a therapist gets some meds and does therapy for years. And I don't see actual progress, I see people walking on a thin line, sometimes even thinner than the one I used to stand when I almost killed myself.
I like to believe there are a thousand things one can do to help himself. It takes a lot of work, patience and understanding. I left my job and ignored college for 2 years now (which means I'm ~3 years late for graduation), because those childhood things had strong ripple effects and I couldn't keep pretending I wasn't feeling depressed and severely apathethic - which I was, and that was the reason every little thing in my life was a struggle up until this year.

Oh yeah, and I also believed I was born to fail. And maybe a few other things.

So I might not have the academic, theoretical, practical or whatever experience, but I can tell you I have been to a lot of places - emotionally and psychologically.
I'm not telling you you don't need professional help. But I'll tell you that you can help yourself A LOT, just through self-reflection, meditation, self-compassion and understanding.

In these 2 years that I've completely, intentionally, "destroyed my life" (no girlfriend, isolated myself from friends, took down any CVs, ignored college, etc), I've learned a good amount of things.
I'll try to list some here:
1. The most important one, which is the first step, is to acknowledge that "these silly mental things" are not silly at all. This depends highly on where you live, as some countries have higher tendency to mock/dismiss psychological and emotional issues as silly stuff. Because of this, I took years to identify and admit my issues, as people around me made me believe it's all bullshit.
2. Along with acknowledging the importance of mental health, you need to understand that only YOU can help yourself - everyone else can only provide assistance. The analogy I usually use is one of a drowning person. I live in a coastal city, and sometimes drowning people kill their rescuers (and, most of the time, themselves) because they refuse to calm the fuck down. You can't save a drowning person if they don't make the choice to save themselves. Of course, in the sea you could punch them in the face or throw a life-buoy, but I don't think that would help regarding mental health.
3. Self-compassion: Understand that it's okay to make mistakes. Destructive inner-dialogue is extremely useless. That's rather disappointing if you, like me, spent most of your life being your own worst enemy hoping that terrorizing yourself would result in something positive.
4. Self-deception: Understand that you could be wrong on every level (even your perception of your situation might be wrong or incomplete), and that, even through introspection is amazing, it has a high chance to deceive you and send you on a rabbit chase. (This is where therapists become very helpful, [in my exclusive opinion] because your mind will throw a lot of BS on your way to self-knowledge, and good therapists can cut through that for you.)
5. Putting things in perspective: Through the above, it becomes much easier to put your situation in perspective. Meditation helps a lot in this regard. Example: I said that when I was a kid, the fact that no one gave a damn probably contributed to my suicide contemplation and attempt. Today, when I think about it, I see how stupid of a kid I was. That was just my school (and home), how could I claim that everyone else in the world were shitty, treacherous, evil or whatever? The beautiful thing about the world is its scale: no matter who you are, there's always more to discover. In a few years, your situation could be COMPLETELY different, if you so desire. Struggles could become funny memories, fears could become habits, distastes could become tastes.


Those are some of the most important things I can remember right now. I could try and apply my "lessons"/"personal philosophy" to your situation and attempt to help in a more direct way, but part of my belief is the drowning person thing mentioned above.
Some people, sometimes automatically and naively, gets addicted/conformed to sadness/struggle/stress. So I believe the best way to assist (as a non-professional, acquaitance/friend) are more indirect ones, unless requested otherwise. This ends up driving people to start "swimming by themselves", instead of "waiting for rescuers".

One thing that really boosts you out of any depression-apathy-anxiety related situation, is reaching some rock bottom. Sometimes, despair and hopelessness is enough to bring out the best in people, enough for them to completely break out of bad situations or feelings. Sometimes, it's suicide contemplation.
If you're worrying now, that means you've either reached a breaking point or your pre-defined rock bottom. You have the best chance, RIGHT NOW, to boost yourself out of that demotivation cycle.
As someone who was severely apathethic for years, let me tell you it feels good to climb your way out of that fucking hole.
 

PS: I hope what I said made some sense. Otherwise I'll just post a screenshot of a melancholic Urist McSad.

[SirQuiamus]

*snip*

In other words, things have not improved at all from the Soviet days? I suppose you now have fewer political dissidents locked up in your hospitals, but otherwise that stuff sounds like something directly out of The Gulag Archipelago. Just like in the not-so-distant past, the system still seems purposefully designed to cause as much indignity and discomfort as possible, and nowadays the underlying rationale simply defies comprehension. Why are they doing this? What do they get out of treating vulnerable people like rotten excrement? It doesn't make any sense.

I'm deeply affected by this because I've spent six months of my life as a psychiatric inpatient here in Finland, and such horror stories as the above make me very, very grateful for a mental health care system which, for all its imperfections, at least tries to protect the rights and dignity of its patients.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I dont know, how it is in your country , but in Russia going to psychiatry for survey ends up with being placed in tiny room with 10 more people, rising up in 5 hours of morning because of insanely bright lights being turned off, this is followed by medical personnel running in and yelling something like useless idiots/ shits rise up. Then  you have to leave the room and it is CLOSED until the dinner ends, so you have to roam uselessly in 60 metre long 5 metre wide corridor, unless you somehow persuade medical personnel to obtain you some books( this gets you some sympathy, so you are treated not as shit, but as underhuman being) .
During night there is another light turned off, bright enough to read, also doors are always open, so every hour someone gets into damn room  for INSPECTION)
All this is combined with medical personnel constantly yelling at everyone/ threatening to tie up to the bed/ to give nasty injections and making you to clean, what they are actually paid for cleaning( like cleaning shit after those mentally-ill people, who cant rise up from the bed) or doing rather unpleasant things like  moving cadavers to morgue, tying  raging persons to the bed, etc)
There are fucking steel rods on the windows, so it is quite prison feeling. And once you are in, you are not out in 30 days, until the doctor makes a decision on you.
Also you better dont tell ( to psychiatrist), that anything is bad, because this ends up with cheap galoperidol( aka, It is painful to think it all, or when you read the second sentence on the page, you cant remember, what was in the first sentence. This is how those, who get it describe the feelings) or getting really really bad diagnosis

Toilet is big room with 6 toilets( not toilet rooms), so everything is public. is closed for 1/3 of the day, and everyone has to use one bucket for 70 people, and there is observational room, those inside dont have the right to leave it until getting permission of the medical personnel, there is no toilet there, and doctor may not to release person out of it and tell something like shit in your pants

Showering is performed once per week, it is quite public and there is always wide opened window in the bathroom, so med-personnel can enjoy smoking, while you freeze during washing and catch cold.

So you better dont get in at all.
 

This is not the norm in most western countries, and also grounds for criminal charges. (In fact, in this US such treatment of patients would not only end with the revocation of practicing licenses, but also land almost everyone involved behind bars for life.)

[Djohaal]

-snip-

Pretty much as SirQuiamus and ChairmanPoo stated, that kind of psychiatry you described is something out of the 1950's. Even the medication is wrong, just drugging up people with haloperidol (yeah it's an old medication, but on the right dosage and right person, it works wonders) is counter-productive.

As I already stated depression when properly managed by a doctor that knows what they are doing (and in psychiatry that sadly is a difficult issue) can be very helpful. Specially the worse cases with severe functional impairment (no longer able to keep up with study/work for instance).

A difficulty with diagnosing mental illnesses is that the psychiatrich approach (at least in my residency's school) is phenomenological. That means we don't look at the enviroment and psychological factors to reach the diagnosis of whatever disorder the person has, only after that we take the external factors into account to plan a treatment approach. In intelligent individuals there's a whole degree of psychological elaboration of the issue which might cover the underlying symptoms. It took me more than six years to figure out I had bipolar mood disorder and I encounter that difficulty daily when dealing with high-functioning individuals.

In bipolar mood disorder and bipolar spectrum disorders there are some hints though, such as familial history of recurring depression or bipolar disorder, early onset of depression(first depression <25 years) and very importantly, a pattern of bad or limited response to classical antidepressants.

[spümpkin]

As previously stated, I am aware that confidentiality isn't something I should look for on the internet, but I would prefer to PM you with my issues. I just don't quite feel comfortable revealing it to the majority yet. Just PM me when you get the time, if you would please.

[strawberry-wine]

When I was a kid, I was always - daily - compared to anyone else. I was never good enough as someone else's kid, or to a cousin, and I was always NOT doing whatever I was 'supposed' to do, or not being what I was supposed to be.

Gabeux's whole post is full of great advice. I wanted to highlight this part because it seems like this sort of treatment is what harms a lot of people's mental health.

It's sort of ironic... the elders that treat children in this way, probably do it because they want them to be successful adults (if only because it would reflect well on the elder). But, being constantly put down and compared negatively to others is a surefire way to prevent someone from being successful.

And for those of us that grew up in this environment, it's important to not do this to ourselves as well!

[tonnot98]

Can't focus, always distracted by the smallest thing, get restless after only a few minutes.

ADHD is fun.