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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When everything feels flat
That is the thinking behind adding a second medicine with a different action rather than only raising the dose of the first, and it is the same thinking behind adding therapy, movement or a sleep plan alongside. Each route reaches something the other does not. It also gives you a way to read a partial result, since the part that improved and the part that did not may need different things.
It is He who sends relief through rain after they have lost hope (Quran 42:28). Relief arriving by a route nobody was watching is an old pattern.
الشورى
وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِي يُنَزِّلُ ٱلۡغَيۡثَ مِنۢ بَعۡدِ مَا قَنَطُواْ وَيَنشُرُ رَحۡمَتَهُۥۚ وَهُوَ ٱلۡوَلِيُّ ٱلۡحَمِيدُ
it is He who sends relief through rain after they have lost hope, and spreads His mercy far and wide. He is the Protector, Worthy of All Praise
Qur’an 42:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Adding something alongside usual care has been tested directly. A meta analysis found that mindfulness based cognitive therapy added to usual care reduced relapse in recurrent depression, with the clearest benefit for people who had already had three or more episodes. What was studied was the addition, not a replacement.
Chiesa A, Serretti A. (2011). Mindfulness based cognitive therapy for psychiatric disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Psychiatry research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Two different routes reach more than one route pushed twice as hard.
A few treatments are only given in a clinic, with someone sitting with you afterwards. The chair and the hours are part of the treatment rather than paperwork.
When someone says they react badly to normal doses of almost everything, take it as information about their body rather than as a personality trait.
Coming off an antidepressant is a piece of work in itself. Plan it slowly with the prescriber rather than stopping on the day you feel well.