The Oil Slick, by Dorothy Donald

This is another guest post by Dorothy Donald.

The good news: the sertraline seems to have quieted The Voice In My Head That Hates Me. The bad news: instead of A Voice In My Head That Likes Me, what’s replaced The Voice In My Head That Hates Me is nothingness.

This means I haven’t been writing. I haven’t really been doing anything much. Mostly I’m in an endless Netflix/Twitter loop. I go to the shop sometimes because I’m told it’s important to leave the house. My kitchen cupboards are embarrassingly well stocked.

I miss writing. I miss the feeling I used to get when an idea rattled around inside my head – no – grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and marched me to my computer and wouldn’t let me leave until it had received some sort of words-in-the-right-order justice.

I miss feeling like I had something to write that people might want to read. I’ve got nothing.

If the inside of my mind had a colour, it would be grey. A texture, cheap scratchy cotton wool. A sound, somewhere between radio static and tinnitus. Smell and taste, a stale fucking rice cake.

I used to laugh and make other people laugh. I used to be capable of excitement, anger, desire – maybe all at once if it was a really interesting day. I used to make plans. I used to look forward to things.

I also used to worry a lot, so I guess it’s not all bad that I’m basically cardboard now.

“But do you think this is the medication, or the condition?” asks my GP.

How the fuck would I know? We have a sample size of one and a lot of uncontrolled –

I sigh and say “I suppose it could be the condition.” That’s what he wants, and it seems easiest to go that way.

But in my previous, unmedicated episodes, I still wrote. I don’t think I wrote especially well – please, nobody ever give me that ‘oh but doesn’t mental illness produce such great art?’ line – but the fact that I sat down and typed something gave me hope that there had been something inside me. Even if it was a twisted and miserable, self-loathing hot mess. There was something.

I’m not saying I regret choosing to take the meds. I just –

I miss writing, that’s all.

Having a breakdown as an early career researcher: it's not always doom and gloom.

This is a guest post by Irene Sutcliffe to celebrate University Mental Health Day.  We have a standing invitation for guest posts - see here - and they can be under your real name, pseudonymous, or anonymous.  Irene is not the writer's real name, so it is not the actor! 

Academic Twitter™ is aflame with tales of mental health in academia, whether it be students, early career researchers or tenured academics. A prominent theme that has emerged is that academic institutions are woefully unequipped to deal with mental health issues. While I have no doubt that many of my colleagues - and their students - at universities across the UK have not received the best support possible from their institutions, my story is more positive.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher on a project at a leading UK university. It’s a digital humanities project, and I’m part of a small team.  I don’t live in the town where my institution is: I work from home but that’s OK – all I need is my laptop and the internet. We’re all integral to the project: if one of us cannot work, it affects us all. Moreover, what we do is so niche and highly skilled that employing someone to cover a role is impossible. We have deadlines, we have responsibilities (I wish I could tell you more but my status as an ECR means I don’t want to provide clues as to who I am). Essentially, someone going off sick for a long time is potentially catastrophic for the entire venture.

I finished my PhD in 2014 and started my role straightaway. I have a history of anxiety and depression, and have been on medication for over 20 years. At my induction meeting, I told my boss about my medical history, but said that as I’d just managed to do my PhD with only a couple of ‘blips’ I didn’t anticipate any huge issues. They were glad I’d told them: the admin department were informed that I had a disability but I declined an Occupational Health meeting.

I won’t go into the reasons for my breakdown: that’s another story. It wasn’t about my job, or even academia, more about my attitude to myself and events beyond my control. By December 2015 I was really struggling, and in January 2016 I had a complete breakdown: I dashed straight back to my parents in A Very Rural Part Of The UK and spent three months there, mainly in bed. During this time I was diagnosed with severe depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD, in case you didn’t know, is really vile and totally misunderstood. See https://iocdf.org/about-ocd).

The minute I fled, I told my boss I was ill. Realising how serious it was, they only asked that I a) obtain sick notes and b) check in with them once a week. I had three months’ full pay, which was a relief (my institution has a good sick pay package). After a while, I asked if I could do some work while off sick, to give me something to do. My boss and Departmental Administrator agreed, and so I gradually built up work until I was doing half my usual amount per day. I found the courage, from somewhere, to leave my parents’ place in April. By this point, I was on half-pay for three months. At the end of July I went back full-time, partly because that was when Statutory Sick Pay kicked in.

Mentally, I continued to struggle throughout the rest of 2016: I was on the waiting list for specialist treatment for OCD, but the list was long. I was also weaning off a strong dose of diazepam from September to November – far too quickly, in hindsight. By December 2016 things got so bad that I was voluntarily admitted to an acute psychiatric ward. The whole time I was in touch with my boss, who was very understanding. I was discharged after a few days, but readmitted over Christmas for two weeks.

I was moved over to a different medication after the second admission which didn’t agree with me and in mid-January 2017 I was readmitted to the unit. Once again my boss was great, only requesting that I obtain sick notes. Two weeks later an incident led to me being placed under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act (effectively, detention for up to six months). Telling work about this was terrifying, especially considering how unwell I was and how much the project would suffer. But the only vibe I got was ‘My colleague and friend is unwell and suffering. I just want them to be OK’.

I spent two months on the ward and was discharged in late March. I saw a brilliant doctor in Occupational Health in April who agreed I could go back to work, and I started on a phased return in May. Since our project’s funding was being renewed for a final year at the end of June, my department offered a flexible contract from that point if I wanted it. I ultimately declined, but it was great to have the option. My boss asked that I check in with them via email each Friday, but didn’t hassle or pressurise me at all. By mid-June I was back to full-time hours. I saw the Occupational Health doctor again in August and they were really amazed at my progress, and said I could always contact them.

Life is stable now, due the right medication, amazing therapy and the passage of time. I have plans for the future, and my boss is more than happy to sponsor me for a postdoc. I worry that my history of having over 200 days off sick over a year and a half is going to damage my prospects, but there’s not much I can do about that.

So: if you have mental health problems and are starting a new role, be upfront from the outset. As my boss knew that I had issues, it made things easier when things went south. Find out what your options are with Occupational Health – institutions should have decent provision. If necessary, send your line manager information about your condition (with something as misunderstood as OCD, this was helpful). Most importantly, be kind to yourself. As a wise psychiatrist once said to me, ‘You can’t be an amazing academic if you’re dead’.

Just The Same But Brand New

This is another guest post by Dorothy Donald.

In 2016 ... 

Despite several goes at it, I never quite made the transition from ‘shortlisted’ to ‘given the damn job’. I’ve sobbed long and loud over this. I’m still trying.

I noticed that people are asking me for help and advice more and more. And half the time I don’t even panic before I respond. They even seem to find it helpful quite a lot of the time.

I spent a whole weekend with my mother for the first time in I don’t even know how many years. We actually both enjoyed it.

I published N papers (where N is a number I’d describe as ‘impressive’ if I were talking about anyone other than me), and I can tell you in a heartbeat how each and every one of those ‘doesn’t really count’. They’re still there on my CV, though.

My friends - the new ones, the old ones, and the re-discovered ones – just kept making my heart swell with love.

I noticed that, when someone treats me like I’m an idiot, I now tend to feel angry instead of assuming I must actually be stupid or wrong. I’ve even started arguing my case from time to time. (See also: when people assume I’m not busy.)

I had a couple of flings. They were fun. They ended with no hard feelings.

My doctor handed me a prescription for Sertraline on a Friday. He then asked if I’d be at home alone all weekend, looked worried until I assured him I’d see at least one friend, and instructed me to make an appointment for the following Monday before leaving the surgery.

My anxiety dreams remained really fucking weird.

I had a holiday. A real one. Not a few days tagged onto a conference. I didn’t check my email once. I know, right?

I had kind colleagues who supported me.

Something happened to me at a conference. When I described it to someone else later, they said “But isn’t that assault? Was anyone else there? Did anyone do anything about it?” Yes, yes, and no.

My physiotherapist did very painful things to my upper back and told me I work too much.

I took up a new hobby. It tires me out physically and makes it impossible to think about work for a while. Also, I’m getting better at it already.

I told a few people something that’s quite important to me about my sexuality. Only one of them was an arsehole about it.

I felt joyful and content and furious and terrified and proud and despairing and tired and sad and anxious and excited and this was, for the most part, OK.

I am in a much better state than I would usually be this close to Christmas.

I am making tremendous progress.

How Do I Keep Finding Myself Here?

This is another guest post by Dorothy Donald.

My bad dreams have become more frequent again. My intricately detailed dream world is populated with boundlessly malicious, alarmingly inventive characters and they are usually coming for me.

The pounding in my chest as I realise what is happening; my legs filling with the electricity of terror and giving way beneath me; the weight of my body slumping forward; the pain, dull but insistent; my blood flowing warmly over my skin before dripping, red and dark, onto the floor in front of me; its metallic tang at the back of my mouth; the pounding on the door close by, too late; the curious, detached calm that comes on the far side of fear; the knowledge that I am about to die.

So yes, I wake up feeling pretty rattled.

Taking Time Off (cross post)

Update 18 Dec 2015. Dan is going to blog about his recovery at roughrecovery.com. Please do read and follow his progress there. And great blog title, by the way!


The following is a cross post of a beautiful post - at his request - by Dan Rough.  Dan is a PhD student in Computer Science at St Andrews University in Scotland. To read more of his writings please visit his blog, PhD (please help Daniel). 

I don't write much. Any writing I do is purely for others (Facebook messages, Christmas cards, love letters to Nigella Lawson, the like). So I really didn't really expect to be writing this, and yet, it's been a long time coming.

I don't know who'll read it, if anyone, but it feels important to me to get it out of my head, and onto paper. Well, the monitor, whatever. For my own good as much as anyone else's, but with a small hope that someone else will identify.

I'm now on a temporary leave of absence from my PhD, currently scheduled for 3 months but extendible as needs be. It's not been an easy decision, and even now my mind's a bit all over the place, but the more I think about it the more certain it becomes.

Prior to the PhD I had recovered from a struggle with anorexia. Somehow, through the strength and support of everyone around me, I made a full recovery within a year and was back to a healthy weight and mindset.

Since beginning, these past couple of years have seen me in and out of relapsing almost constantly. After returning from a great conference in the US just over a month ago, my weight's plummeted again through the stress of travel, presenting my research to the pros of the field, returning and trying to catch up on work, figuring out where I'm going with the research question, and above all trying to shun the demons telling me that I'm totally incapable of doing it.

The PhD isn't the root cause of the disorder, but right now, attempting to recover from this nadir while also trying to stay above board with research are two conflicting goals. My ill health means that I can't focus properly, which means work falls behind, which causes additional stress and subsequent ill-health. It's a Catch-22 that needs to be broken.

Everyone told me so, but I pressed on regardless, convinced that I was coping. In fact, the PhD ended up being a distraction; an excuse for not eating properly, for being reclusive, and for generally encouraging all my bad ED behaviours.

I've been blessed to have the full support of family, supervisor, friends, doctor and Student Services. They've reassured me throughout the whole process that this is the right decision; that taking time off to focus on physical and mental recovery from anorexia is necessary. It's got to the point that health can't take a back seat any more.

It's not a failing to admit that I need help.

Success isn't two letters at the start of my name; it's two fingers to the demons trying to take it all away from me, and two hands on the reins to take control of my life again

The Kevin Bacon Model of Depression

We'd like to welcome a new contributor called Dorothy Donald (not their real name). This is Dorothy's first post, so many thanks.  

Trigger Warning: this post does discuss suicidal thoughts.

This is a very simple game. You start from a thought – any thought that it is possible to have – whether it’s “My bus is late” or “I’ve been invited to a wedding” or “The sun is shining today.” Next, see what the next thought that follows on from that could be. It might be “I will be late for work” or “I will have to go shopping for clothes” or “I will need my sunglasses.” And then the next thought from that. You get the idea.

Now, whatever your starting thought is, see if you can go from that thought to “I might as well kill myself” in fewer than six moves. 
I am exceptionally good at this game.
I have been playing this game for a long time. I play it a lot. I play it at some of the obvious times you might already have thought of, like when I have a paper rejected (“I’m useless”), or a disastrous date (“I’m unlovable”), or when pretty much anything happens in the news (“The world is a terrible place”). But I also play it when I’m walking around the supermarket (“It’s not possible to be an ethical consumer”), or when I’m making my tea (“I have failed to do anything productive today”), or when I’m in the pub with my friends, laughing (“Everyone here is so much more fun and interesting than I am”). 
Most of the time, I don’t even have to try – I just accelerate from nought to catastrophe as easily as I breathe. This means that no-one notices, which means there’s no problem. But sometimes one win leads on to another, and another. Before I know it I don’t seem to have the time or the energy for anything else like answering my emails or working on that grant or getting out of bed and having a shower. My friends start to worry and ask searching questions about how I’m ‘really’ doing. I find reasons not to talk to them. (All of this, of course, constitutes failure, which gives me a head-start for the next round.)
A few months ago, when I went beyond the mere abstract and started getting onto the particulars, I realised I was not well. 
After rather a long time, I decided that I could use some help. 
After quite a lot longer than that, I decided that the little voice telling me I didn’t deserve any help could shut up for a while. 
After even longer than that, I found a phone number online and stared at it for a while. Then I closed my browser. Then I came back and stared at it again the next day.
Eventually, I made a phone call.
Tomorrow I have my first ever sit-down with a Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy (CBT) practitioner. I want to learn a new game.

You can find Dorothy's second post here. 

At Depressed Academics we welcome, encourage, and look forward to guest posts. A standing invitation for guest posts is here. 

Being anti-depressed: My experience taking setraline (Guest Post)

By Evgenij Thorstensen from his blog Journey is return.

Quite a lot has been written about what being depressed feels like. However, I have seen comparatively little about what taking an antidepressant feels like. Note the "feels like": There's plenty of information about the risks, effects, and side-effects in clinical terms, on wikipedia and beyond. When I went to see a doctor about my depression and started taking an antidepressant, I had done my research, but I can't say that I knew what it would feel like.

Backstory

In retrospect, I remember having depressive episodes since the age of 14. I am now 25; I finally sought medical treatment about a year ago. My doctor prescribed me setraline, initially 50mg/day, a low therapeutic dose. I took this for about two months with initial positive effect that gradually died down. My doctor then proposed to up the dose to 100mg/day, which I accepted and have been taking for about seven months (with persistent positive effect) before gradually tapering off over a month. At the time of writing, I am no longer taking setraline as of three weeks ago. The reason I decided to stop taking the drug was basically to see what would happen, since I had been free from depression for eight months or so, and since the (mostly sexual) side effects, while bearable, were nevertheless unpleasant. These, as they say, are the facts; the goal of this article is to describe what effect taking setraline had on me, and more specifically, what it felt like.

The phrase "anti-depressed" in the title of this article is from an article by Johann Hari, which I found a few months after starting treatment. In it, he talks about his experience taking an SSRI (paroxetine) for many years. The whole article is worth reading, but in particular, he reports, from his own experience, that

You enter a new state that I think of as ‘anti-depression’. We are not depressed, but nor are we like the undepressed. We are different. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we will never be truly, madly, deeply unhappy. It’s like we have been inoculated from the miseries of life.

I relate strongly to this. For me, a large part of being depressed was that nearly everything had strong emotional significance. The smallest experiences had intense emotional affect attached, whether good or bad. During the first month of taking setraline, I noticed my emotions gradually lose some of their intensity. The small things and experiences in my life no longer had much emotional impact on me.

As an illustration of what I mean by that, consider the song "Breaking the habit". It's a favourite of mine (Linkin Park seems to be high on the "depressed people's choice" list of bands), and has plenty of emotional significance. Before taking setraline, I remember listening to it on repeat (ten times? fifteen?), raw emotion going through me, without abating even after the song had repeated a few times. Sometimes this (or other) songs would play in my head as background music, with vivid emotions attached. On setraline, listening to it no longer immediately brings a strong emotional reaction. The memories I associate with this song feel more detached, less vivid. Most days, it's now just a song I like. Putting it on repeat becomes boring after one repetition, maybe two.

Before taking setraline, strong emotions were my constant companion. In retrospect, it was like the stereotypical description of being fourteen --- an intense level of emotional affect attached to everyday things. I felt in tune with the universe, but with a constant and consuming undercurrent of being not of this world, of not belonging. This undercurrent would rise to the surface from time to time (sometimes triggered by something, sometimes not), and presto! Depressive episode. On setraline, this "in-tunedness" went away, only making appearances in settings that should have a strong emotional effect on a person, say upon reading a particularly emotive scene in a novel, or having a deeply heartfelt conversation with a close friend.

Apropos friends, the second effect I noticed was that I felt less affected by other people. In particular, I felt less connected to people around me, perhaps less empathic. It doesn't sound very nice, but bear with me. Empathy, in one sense, is feeling what someone you're interacting with feels. Before taking setraline, I felt a strong sense of connection when interacting with my friends, and it seemed to me that I felt what they felt when it came to emotional situations. On setraline and looking back, however, it seems that in such situations, rather than feeling what somebody else was, the feelings on my side were a lot stronger --- a kind of magnified empathy, out of proportion to the other person's actual emotions. When a friend told me about something bad that happened to them, I felt strongly for them, even when the incident hadn't affected them very much. If someone was upset, it felt to me like it was a big deal for them, even when it was actually small and insignificant.

Before taking setraline, wronging someone felt like the end of the world, and being apart from people felt like crushing loneliness. After, the strength of emotion that other people's experiences and stories inspire in me seem more proportional to the strength of their emotions. It has become easier to apologise, since doing someone a minor wrong does not feel like the end of the world any more. I feel much less lonely, even if I have seen less of my friends recently, rather than more. In short, everything is less intense, which echoes the quote from Hari's article above. However, his article continues:

People who cannot feel physical pain end up getting into terrible accidents. They burn their hands without realising it, crush their legs in doors, contract illnesses that eat away at them unawares.
There is a similar process when you cannot feel searing mental pain. Like all the anti-depressed people I know, I have racked up big debts, been crazily casual about my health, and allowed myself to continue in emotionally damaging relationships for years, all because none of it really hurts.

Here his experience and mine part ways. I would instead liken my experience to having my pain threshold go from an extremely low level (everything is emotionally significant) to a moderate one. Likewise, the part about it "none of it really hurting" has not been true for me. Everything does hurt less, and it has become much easier to push away something that's on my mind. So far, however, a lot of the worrying in my life has been what I call worrying "on idle", like a parked car with the engine running. You're worrying about something, but not actually getting anywhere or doing anything about it, mainly because there isn't anything that can be done, at least for the moment. Instead of leaving it be and doing something else, however, we worry and ruminate. I knew how to deal with it even before I started setraline, but...

On setraline, this "idling" is pretty much gone. Pushing something that I don't want to think about away from my mind and doing something else (productive or otherwise) is much easier. As for the things that do need attention, I find that they are still amenable to rational thought, without as much anxiety and worry attached. Such thought then either leads to a plan and then to action, or to pushing the issue away, without the idling. It does sometimes require effort to not ignore something I'd rather not think about, but I haven't found it to be a problem. So far, my life hasn't slid out of control as per Hari's description, anyway. And as for everything painful hurting less, I'd say it's less rather than not at all. Breaking up with my ex-boyfriend hurt, for example, but instead of sending me into a depressive episode I spent a week in a funk, then gradually went back to normal the week after that. From what I hear, that is the healthy emotional reaction to an amicable breakup.

Actually, re-reading this paragraph I am reminded of the serenity prayer, which goes

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Ignoring God and the wisdom part, there's a more general point to be made here. Of the things I tend to worry about, there are more of the kind that I can't do anything about, at least in the short term. Consequently, given an issue that is on my mind, letting it slide is the right decision more frequently than worrying about it would be, and so erring on the side of letting things slide seems to have the higher expected utility. Other people's ratio of things worth worrying about to things worth leaving alone may of course be different, and that may be one possible explanation of why my experience differs from Johann Hari's.

Now that I am no longer taking setraline, some of the emotional intensity of everyday things has come back, but (so far) nowhere near the original level. Likewise, putting something out of my mind requires more effort. Picture a line from "nothing is emotionally significant" to "everything is". Taking setraline took me from the latter end to somewhere closer to the middle, rather than to the other end. Now that I am no longer taking it, I can feel myself slowly move in the "everything" direction. This, again, is similar to what Johann Hari reports experiencing, and his article concludes:

It feels real. It feels human. It feels like me, after all these years.

For me it feels more like "old me", which would be the depressed me. However, as of yet there isn't a non-depressed (rather than anti-depressed) me to compare to. I hope that there soon will be.

P.S: I very much recommend Johann Hari's other articles about depression.

This post was offered to Depressed Academics by Evgenij Thorstensen.  It originally appeared on his blog Journey is return. It is published here under Creative Commons and Evgenij retains copyright. We thank Evgenij very much for this very interesting and personal post. 

Guest post invitation

This post is  to invite you to write a guest post, should you wish to.

As an aside, my pointer has been at zero or close to it for several days now, thanks for asking.  Actually in general this year I have not been too bad, and sometime I'll post about a trick that has been working for me.  But specifically starting this blog has been helpful because it has given me something to do and make me feel we can do something about this.  Except that feeling good gives me a bit of that imposter syndrome again.

We do want a community and we are more about people telling them stories than giving advice.

It the minute we do not have a great setup for guest posts, but you can do this easily: just mail us at depressed.academics@gmail.com and we can put something up.   It will appear under one of our names but we can credit you.   Of course we will credit your preferred name, real, pseudonym, or anonymous.

Posts will be published under the share-alike creative commons licence, but you will retain copyright.