That's an incredibly unhelpful attitude.

More importantly, though, depression and anxiety can be symptoms of other ailments as well as side effects of medications (medications targeting non-mental health issues or targeting mental health issues). It's almost always worth going to a primary care provider to get a real diagnosis as it can short-circuit the recovery process if a physical cause can be identified (like thyroid conditions, side effects from birth control medications for women, and others). If these aren't factors, at least they've been ruled out.

If you are lucky, your PCP will check for the physical causes of depression, such as the ones you have just described. Sadly, in my experience as a person with depression, most of the time they just hand you a free sample of an SSRI and call it a day.

I found out 15 years after first being seen for depression that one of my root causes was a B-12 deficiency. Nobody had ever thought to check for it.

I have a short essay about checking for some of the other physical root causes for depression here: https://radiosof.com/category/mental-health/

and here: https://appliedgrace.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/a-simple-menta...

I suspect that there's a hidden epidemic of subtle nutritional deficiencies. Everyone just accepts the situation but widespread screening would likely pay huge societal dividends.

Hard agree. Especially since modern farming methods create food with much less nutritional value than it used to have. But nobody gets rich off of magnesium supplements, so we don't check magnesium levels for anxiety (for example).

If you have a health problem, make sure to try to have a problem that has a lucrative treatment.

Definitely, even without screening, the first step should be a prescription for basic OTC nutrients for which people are often deficient and that are associated with depression, zinc, vitamin D etc...

Similarly, most of the time people leave the doctor with a prescription for paracetamol and an advice to monitor the symptoms and come back a short while after if the symptoms don't improve.

It's simply a low cost and efficient first step of the diagnostic.

> That's an incredibly unhelpful attitude.

Shrug. There is no way I'd be able to afford it, if I needed it.

The unhelpfulness isn't coming from me.

It can definitely be expensive, depending on where you live.

For those that have access to affordable therapy, it can really help and ease a lot.

For those that do not have access to that – it’s definitely unfair and yes I guess those people by necessity will need to find other more affordable solutions.

I would definitely not call it entertainment though. Just like seeing a PT isn’t entertainment.