Has anyone heard of spontaneous remission for severe bouts of depression

July 11, 2013 1:56 PM

I've struggled with depression for 30 years and have tried multiple medications/treatments, light therapy, Transcendental Meditation, etc. The last modality I had so much hope for was Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation; the treatments actually made my depression worse. Since we all know of cases where tumorous cancers have disappeared without explanation, I'm hoping someone has witnessed this occurring in a friend or loved one who's been diagnosed with clinical depression?
posted by Jeanne3 to Health & Fitness (10 answers total)

Read Hyperbole and a Half a. because it's awesome and full of truth, and b. because it describes what could be spontaneous remission, but could be the depression responding to time, and whatever other methods were applied. Depressed people are not always good at gauging their level of depression.
posted by theora55 at 2:41 PM on July 11, 2013 [3 favorites]

Yes.

My best friend from college has a family history of clinical depression and suffered from it himself. This culminated in a suicide attempt. He was diagnosed as bipolar and put on massive doses of Lithium. (I never agree with the diagnosis, but what do I know?)

Two years later he removed himself from onerous family responsibilities and moved to sunny Mexico. He's had some challenges since then (a partner with cancer, financial issues) but he has been unmedicated (and mostly fine) for the past five years.

I wish the same "remission" for you.
posted by 2soxy4mypuppet at 3:24 PM on July 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Twice in my life I have apparently "recovered" from what had been diagnosed as severe depression, treated with medication and lots of one-on-one talk therapy. Now, that doesn't mean I'm all sunshine and flowers all the time, I still have issues with depression. But I'm no longer in the place where I can't drag myself out of bed or I have no hope for the future.

The first time: I looked through a list of medications that could cause depression and saw propanalol (inderal) on it. I asked my doctor about it and he said, "yeah, it can cause depression but not at the dosage you're taking." Because the problem for which I was taking inderal (heart palpitations) was a bigger concern for me than it was for my doctor, I decided to give up the drug. I mean, inderal was a wonderful drug for me. Just being on it for like a year stopped a bunch of problems, but I went off it and, well, never looked back. I don't know if the sudden lift to my spirits was caused by discontinuing the medication or if it was solely coincidence. But if you are taking *any* medications, read the fine print and discuss with your doctor alternatives.

The second time: I got out of a shitty relationship that was literally making me crazy. In order to believe that this pathological liar was sincere and that he wasn't just making shit up in the face of direct contradiction, I had to screw my head on backwards. I had no idea how hard that was until I got out of the relationship, but once I did -- and it was by no means easy to disentangle myself, let me tell you -- but once I did, I just kind of ran out of things to talk about in therapy. Everything in my life was easier and more pleasant.

Today, as I said, I still have issues with depression. I take a very mild cocktail of anti-depressants/anti-anxiety drugs, in part to deal with a chronic illness that I have, which is exacerbated by stress so I want to keep my stress levels down. But it's like night and day.

I hope this helps some. Depression is a bitch and I hate for anyone to suffer from it.
posted by janey47 at 3:36 PM on July 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

For almost two decades I was more often than not cripplingly depressed. Not infrequently suicidal. There were periods where it eased but I was never quite not a depressive.

Almost a decade ago now, my thinking about a number of things started to shift. My view of the world and my relationship with it were transformed, and since then I have been as far away from "depressed" as one might imagine it is possible to be. I could not, as a depressed person, even conceive of living as I do now. I have gone through difficult major life events in recent years; it's nothing environmental. I am entirely confident that the depression will never return.

The only things that make this anything of a difficult issue for me now are some pain over the lost years -- though the present is filled with gratitude in a way that does a lot to make up for that -- and that I feel like I have little to offer by way of help.

I have trouble explaining my path out of depression in part because depressed/not depressed is so great a schism that those states seem to have separate languages, and I can no longer understand the dialect of depression. But I can assert that recovery -- complete recovery -- is entirely possible.

Gratitude, love, and doing things for others instead of focusing on myself are critical elements of the previously absent happiness, but I do remember enough of things to know that suggesting "gratitude" to a person struggling with depression borders on the absurd. But, that said, I wish I had figured out earlier that doing what I can to make others happy invariably serves to make me happy in the process. If you can't nurture yourself right now, nurture others. A pet can be a good starting point.
posted by kmennie at 4:42 PM on July 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

i went through a year-and-a-half major depression in high school from the latter half of my sophomore year and all throughout my junior year. the summer before my senior year i had a supernatural encounter with God, became a follower of Jesus and my depression instantaneously disappeared. good thing because just as my senior year started my very typical group of high school friends started attempting suicide like crazy. there were a number of people from my hometown, several of them my friends, who later did commit suicide after many attempts.

years later i became severely depressed again and this did repeat over the years a couple more times. neither years of therapy, with several therapists, nor meds, and i tried oodles of meds, ever did anything for me. i found a lot of help through a 12-step group for dysfunctional and/or alcoholic families (ACA). these days when depression shows up i am usually able to fight it off pretty quickly, in a matter of days whereas in the past it would stick around for months or years.
posted by wildflower at 7:03 PM on July 11, 2013

Treating my anxiety lifted almost all of the depression, when combined with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/mindfulness. I still have slow days, but the suicidal ideation is really rare.

It could be age, leaving my shitty horrible job and starting to do something in line with my values more than anything, but realising I have anxiety and treating it short-circuited much of the depressive spiral. Not a spontaneous remission, but if you'd told be this six years ago I'd have been shocked.
posted by geek anachronism at 9:13 PM on July 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

I was clinically depressed off and on for about 20 years (tweens -- though back in the '80s they still refused to acknowledge children could get seriously depressed -- through my early/mid-30s). Meds certainly helped some, but the things that ultimately seemed to help me more deeply were: several years of steady therapy with a feminist psychologist to work on deep-seated family/self-esteem/relationship issues, getting my teeth and jaw fixed (the source of a fair amount of self-consciousness), and a lot of yoga and Buddhism to cultivate better skills of mindfulness, gratitude, and compassion.

I've had some ups and downs since then (e.g., cancer treatment and its aftermath), but have been off antidepressants and not had a major depressive episode for... holy shit, something like 9 years? So yeah, I would say it's been a good, long remission -- but I also wouldn't necessarily classify it as spontaneous. It was a lot of hard work, but it feels like there was some serendipity involved, too.

I wish you the very best.
posted by scody at 10:33 PM on July 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

My friend who is a psychologist is involved in some very interesting longitudinal research about depression and social interaction. She is following a large group of people who have had at least two major depressive episodes in their lives. She is also tracking the number of "social groups" they are involved in. This counts things like "family", "colleagues", "sport group", "choir", "group therapy", "mothers and children playgroup" etc. So someone who has no family ties, doesn't work, and doesn't participate in any social groups gets scored "0" for social groups. Someone with all of the above circles scores 6.

She has found over (I think) a five year period that chances of recurrence of depression scale almost linearly with the number of social groups the person is involved with. The more than 20 people in her study who are involved with eight or more different groups have a 0% recurrence of depression over (I think) five years. Which is statistically significant and pretty impressive.

She finds a slight effect based on how much the person "identifies" with the group members. E.g. attending a sports group where you feel unconnected to the other people and like you don't fit in is less likely to stop your depression recurring than attending that knitting circle full of people who you think are just like you. But even the "non-identifying" groups have some preventative effect.

Okay, the big elephant in the room is whether the correlation is due to causation, and/or which way the effect goes. It seems more intuitive that people who are becoming less depressed would join more groups and people who are becoming more depressed would drop out of social groups. BUT she has also carried out a study of depression patients where they were required by their psychologist to join and attend some particular social group that they wouldn't otherwise have joined (e.g. a group for depressed people, or toastmasters, or something else). These patients also seemed to benefit from the "protective" effect. Also she tried a bunch of other things to test which way the effect goes and I think she has found it quite suggestive of the hypothesis that it is the social groups preventing the depression rather than lack of depression leading to joining of social groups.

If you are interested in this research, memail me and I can send you links to published material and/or put you in touch with her directly to ask more questions. I'd rather not link here because of how identifiable that would make me.
posted by lollusc at 11:23 PM on July 11, 2013 [6 favorites]

Yes indeed.

A school friend suffered from severe major depression for years, undergoing a wide range of treatment modalities, was institutionalised several times, frequent suicidal ideation. He is now (at least to all appearances) in full remission and has been for 8-10 years.
posted by dontjumplarry at 1:51 AM on July 12, 2013

Yes. I have read of a case of spontaneous remission in a woman with refractory depression that had lasted 17 years. The patient in question threw a huge party to celebrate and invited all her therapists and psychiatrists.

Spontaneous remission is always a possibility with any illness, and it happens with depression too. Don't give up hope. There's an answer, it's finding it that is a challenge.
posted by rhombus at 4:18 PM on August 1, 2013