>>12494133this fag here
>>12494153Gonna use you as an excuse to ramble further.
I've been chronically depersonalized for a decade and while lexapro helped a LOT with severe anxiety and depression, I couldn't live with having the very blunted emotions I had left stripped away.
Anyway, monoamine hypothesis aside, antidepressants aren't to cure you, they're to put you in a functional state and to halt the negative feedback loop of chronic stress/anxiety and depression which in turn gives the HPA axis, neurochemistry, the autonomic nervous system and so on a chance to reset, reversal of hippocampal atrophy is also a factor. PTSD for instance is a more severe version of countless systems, notably the aforementioned HPA axis and autonomic dysregulation (low vagal tone (overactivated SNS/underactive PSNS (fight or flight is on all the time (this wreaks havoc on your body))))
My point is double-pronged. First, depression, PTSD etc. cause VERY measurable changes throughout the body that are completely obvious. Depression is a little more complicated (tldr chronic system inflammation causing a tangled web of bullshit) so I'll use PTSD as an example. First, you can identify low vagal tone (overactivation of fight or flight) with symptom clusters such as hypertension, tachycardia, mydriasis (dilated pupils), cold/numb feet/hands (fight or flight redirects bloodflow to prioritize physical activity), urinary norepinephrine/cortisol and blah blah. Then there's tons of biomarkers for various psychiatric disorders, and lastly brain activity changes significantly in a predictable way for these various disorders; this is obvious via imaging.
Second, while this should be inferrable by now, stress (in countless ways I didn't bother listing) resulting in these negative feedback loops means you CANNOT ignore these disorders, they do not go away on their own and will often get worse without intervention. Non-medical treatments working depends on severity
