Q. Dear Goddess: I’ve been through hell with a guy and just finally broke up with him. But I’m deeply depressed. A psychopharmacologist has given me Lexapro, which helps, but can’t afford a therapist. Am I making a mistake? –Sick at Heart
A. Dear Sick at Heart: I’ve just read that the number of Americans taking antidepressants has doubled since 1996: Ten percent of the population now take some version of what you’re taking. This isn’t a bad thing (I worry a bit about children, but we’ll talk about that another time) but it’s an incomplete thing.
While adjusting your mood is very helpful, it’s only a piece of the problem created during your saga and breakup with your lover. To process this, my instinct is to say that you may need more than Lexapro, more than friends, more than empathic family….but real, trained help. Maybe not for long (the combination of therapy PLUS antidepressants is effective and often quick) but until you are not, as you put it, “deeply depressed.”
Unfortunately, insurance companies encourage this unbalanced approach, supporting the drug part but not the therapy part of the equation–as though the drugs themselves can help you untangle and process a grueling, confusing, demoralizing time in your life. Perhaps because in my earthly life I’m trained in social work, I believe deeply in the effectiveness of doing both. You can find good therapists with sliding, reasonable fees, oftn by contacting analytic institutes (a great one in New York City, for instance, is The Training Institute for Mental Health), which offer superb treatment at low cost. Give it a try, earth girl. You may find that you can ween yourself off Lexapro sooner than you (and your psychopharmacologist) think if you can plunge into the actual problem that has left you struggling with depression.
