 Hey guys, welcome back to my youtube channel Daniel Rosell here bringing you this video today on Halloween spooky time And also on the eve of the elections in Israel. This is gonna be the fifth time Can you believe it? That is radius have gone to vote for a new government in four years Who would have thunk it that a country the only Jewish country in the world? It could have so many opinions and so many political parties and so much indecision about who's gonna govern them Anyway, I want to talk about a pretty serious subject tonight Change the tone a bit here and that is mental health now the last time I recorded a video regarding mental health or anything connected to it Was in the summer when I talked about the culture of silence among men and particularly among young men when taking SSRAs and I just made that video I think it was Back in August lovely sunny day, and I just kind of sat on my roof and recorded a video And I just wanted to say I am a young man I hope 33 is still considered young and I take an SSRI and if I had known other young men in my social circle who were taking SSRIs or antidepressants and more common Terminology it would have made a big difference. I would have been a lot less scared to get on them So when I made that video was pretty much saying look if anyone draws an ounce of comfort from this video It was a success Now to two nights ago I was watching YouTube because in addition to being a small-time YouTube creator I'm also an enormous fan of YouTube. I probably spend a good two hours per day watching YouTube videos cooking videos Cockpit videos as in aviation videos are my favorites, but I watch documentaries I watch everything on YouTube and I came across this video on my home page from a lady called Hannah Chung and she posted a two-year update about being on Lexapro and I decided to watch it because I've been on Lexapro for going on a year myself 20 milligrams as you can see here in the packaging that I'm holding up to the camera here Minus the Hebrew and Arabic script. It probably looks pretty much the same wherever you go in the world And Hannah's one of those people who you know when I was right now I might I just clicked into it because I'm like oh Lexapro. I take Lexapro I'll watch this video But when when I was looking at taking Lexapro, and I was at a point of absolute fear and Terror of the possibility of taking SSRI videos like the one Hannah put up made all the difference It literally gave me the courage to start taking Psychotropic medication for the first time in my life and by the way every time I sit down to record a video about anything related to Depression or anxiety or mental health or an SSRI There's a very strong voice in my head saying don't do it Daniel. You know don't no one needs to know this and As I've explained before as I've explained before the reason I do occasionally upload videos like this is because You know, I can tell you that when I was at my lowest point Videos like this were what got me over the line and said it's okay to not be okay It's okay to to see a you know to be on mental health medication It's very normal one in ten people. I believe in the US are on an antidepressant ten percent It's not uncommon if you go into a subway on a random day And there's more than ten people in the queue one of those people is taking an SSRI in all probability so In any event I did want to say something a little bit more specific than just these opening remarks in this video Something Hannah said in her video was that she kind of torments herself With these thoughts about do I still need to be on an SSRI medication and I wrote a couple of comments I don't know if she's ever gonna see them or Respond to them, but I wanted to sort of say them anyway to whoever might watch this video Something Hannah said was you know, she's been two years on Lexa Pro It's been life-changing and she can look back upon the life-changing journey that she's been on and see how much has helped her But every time and you know that she Whatever time she takes her medication she Says I have an app on my phone called Medisafe and it really has a sound effect that goes like this Like shaking a pillbox and you get that notification and there must be a thought for millions of people who say do I need to take this medication? Now per the disclaimer that I'm gonna add at the start of this video. I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a Psychologist I'm not any kind of mental health professional This is purely the perspective of a patient, but I did want to throw my own experience into the kind of debate or conversation about this so to speak and The point I want to make is as follows my journey to Mental health was a bit circuitous. I first went to a psychiatrist because I found that It's kind of a weird story, but if you want to hear it again, if you haven't heard it before here it is I had gallbladder surgery not many people's mental health story starts with gallbladder surgery, but mine did and I had a lot of stomach problems afterwards and I was trying to get to the bottom of you know, how to feel better and I was looking at everything on my diet and one of the first things I said was I drink a hell of a lot of coffee and When I delved into why he was drinking coffee. I realized it was kind of beyond The reason that most people drink coffee, you know Most people drink coffee because they need a bit of a boost. They feel a bit better taking coffee and I realized that for me it had taken the place of It was something beyond that I couldn't stop drinking coffee not beyond the kind of You know withdrawal period and you get through some headaches and you kind of get off coffee for me It was way way way beyond that. It was like can't live without coffee. I can't summon up the motivation without coffee I can't focus without coffee So I put this into Google and I think a couple of searches led me to ADHD Very very common for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, especially adults to self-medicate with stimulants including coffee Caffeine's probably the only stimulant that you can get over the counter So I enter psychiatrists and said look I need to clean up my diet I need to get rid of I'm drinking so much coffee and I know it's there's some reason for us Is there any chance I might have ADHD? Psychiatrists said Maybe do you want to try an SS or higher? Do you want to try a stimulant? And I'm actually not kidding that was literally how the conversation went down. It was like red pill blue pill in the matrix Everyone's seen the matrix, right? So I went for the blue pill. I went for the asset. I went for the stimulant I went for Ritalin. I took the ADHD diagnosis and probably two or three months after taking Ritalin. I Was at the lowest point I've ever been. I was literally my dips in my depression I'd gone from being kind of moderate dips with my daily coffee habit to Very very far down. Just to say that so I went back to a new doctor because this guy retired the first guy I saw and He said you know what you have ADHD, but if you want to continue with treatment, you're gonna have to start an SSRI because What this drug has done to you is not okay, and you know, it could be dangerous. You could be suicidal, etc So I started an SSRI and I felt amazing Unfortunately, I When I was able to go back on ADHD medication Vyvanse After a few months, I was convinced that Vyvanse was the answer Vyvanse was amazing. I was like I can do anything on Vyvanse. So I said what this SSRI? I don't need this SSRI. It's it's doing nothing. All I needed was Vyvanse I just needed this other stimulant drug and it all works and You can probably guess how the story ends. I hit again another another horrible horrible It actually scares me that the hairs on the back of my neck stick up thinking about this low point How bad it was when I just when I came off Vyvanse and I told my doctor that's it. I'm done I'm not taking Zoloft anymore. Sorry Zoloft. I got all these drugs mixed up so Long story short after all this I went back to my psychiatrist. We tried one more drug which is well buterin, which is a Drug typically given it's kind of an off-label depression drug not SSRIs It's got very stimulate stimulating properties and the exact same thing happens again. I was convinced this was The answer. I was amazing. I didn't need coffee. I had all the energy and then my depression got Just as bad as it was on Vyvanse So I finally went back to my psychiatrist And I said I'm done with stimulants. We've tried five different stimulant medications They've all had the same effect. I feel amazing that I feel terrible and the only thing that's actually helped me Consistently has been an SSRI. Can I go back on the SSRI? So the psychiatrist said no problem. We'll put you back on SSRI I don't know if this is how it's supposed to be but this is how it happened for me Anyway, the point of all this story that I'm kind of building up to is as follows What I told my psychiatrist is what I'm gonna tell you when I was on a The various stimulants I was on Vyvanse, Ritalin Well buttern I put in the same category Subjectively I felt amazing Objectively my my wife who I live with who sees me more than any other person Didn't say I was going crazy, but she was like I could see it was not good for you It was exacerbating all your kind of slightly obsessive tendencies and it was just not a good medication for you and I said to my wife Hannah I Feel of all the drugs I've tried that I was the nicest person the best person the most compassionate person The most sociable person the most relaxed person the most happy person on an SSRI and she said yep That would be my opinion too. So what I would say Hannah and I'm the other Hannah and all my wife Hannah the Hannah the The YouTube Hannah I mentioned at the start of this video to draw it all back to this She kind of beats herself up. She says, you know, I've been on Lexa Pro for two years It's been a game changer but she has this daily moment where she says do I need to be honest and What my experience has taught me is that I'm a very very bad judge of How much an SSRI helps me? I Overestimated to a Crazy degree how much stimulants were helping me. I thought stimulants were unlocking all my Latent potential and that's all I needed and they were really not that actually really not helping me and SSRI was keeping everything together and I said and I must took that for violence and said I don't need it so When you go to a psychiatrist and they ask Questions like what does your wife think of your behavior or what does your husband think of your behavior? What do your co-workers think your behavior? There's a reason that's a common line of questioning when you're talking to a psychiatrist and that's because Are some as psychiatric patients whether you have anxiety Depression ADHD bipolar schizophrenia whatever mental health problem you have It's not a good idea to trust upon your subjective perception of how a medications affecting you The the the process that seems to work for most psychiatrists is some combination of here is your subjective the patient's estimation Here's an objective estimation from the love from the people close to the patient and the composite of those two perceptions is a Good estimation of how this drugs actually facts in the patient So what I said to Hannah, I don't know if she's ever gonna read my comments or my comments on her video was you know I completely empathize With where she is because I'm one year Alexa pro and I have these daily thoughts of Do I need to be taking this pill as a time to get off that I can imagine after two years those thoughts only become louder but I have a periodic reminder two things I remember the fact that How grossly I underestimated how much my accessory was helping me When I chose to come off it foolishly and went back on it then I Remember how much I overestimated the extent to which stimulants were helping me and Finally, I guess if something is helping you if you can accept that finally that you know your brain might need a Selective serotonin we uptake inhibitor to trick the brain to keeping the serotonin around Debusting the serotonin and we know that depression isn't actually cured by serotonin It's it's that the serotonin hypothesis has been sort of debunked and it seems like it's some downstream effect The truth is no one really understands the brain But when I think about the kind of negative of negative negatives to come as being on an SSRI You know, perhaps you're experiencing weight gain perhaps your experience Experiencing sexual dysfunction perhaps you're a bit more tired Those are things that people rarely forget about but what people Commonly forget about is the risks and the experience of not being on an SSRI of not being on medication if you have depression the very real risk of Your depression ending in suicide God forbid or a suicidal attempt God forbid or on a less dramatic note just maybe loss of employment and general day-to-day misery something more like Dostemia persistent depressive disorder, which was more my depression. It was a very very low level but very very sticky depression that kind of didn't budge and Occasionally I'm pretty good about taking my lexapro on time. I attribute that to Keeping a pill Dispenser on my desk and I also use a great app called Medisafe, which I highly recommend Everyone take a medication install this app on their phone. It's free and it gives you dirty reminders There is a sound effect like this of a pillbox shaking of when to take your medication So I think I've rarely I don't think I've ever forgotten on almost a year to take my lexapro Which is pretty good if I can to my own horn a few times. I have taken it late due to not bringing my lexapro with me staying out late at a concert whatever life happens and I have noticed if I'm more than six hours late taking my lexapro I can hear that voice in my head not literally a voice in my head, but that kind of that kind of thinking pattern of negativity of You're not good enough of low self-esteem blah blah blah. I can subtly feel it Coming back to the four of my consciousness and That's when I realized that's that always wakes me up. It says Okay, this is a reminder that you still need to assess us alright And by the way one last point because I realize I've been talking for 15 minutes now I'm gonna wrap up this blog post some of the content. I really enjoy in YouTube. I try to keep up with different psychiatric channels talking about you know research into Psychiatric illness or a mental illness and that kind of thing and there's a few great lectures I've watched one of them that really caught my interest I was talking about brain scans of depressed patients untreated depressed patients Treated depressed patients and controls and something I find fascinating was that when they looked at the brain scans of Treaty depressed patients versus untreated depressed patients. They found a lot of similarities Don't ask me for the link or if you do I'll dig through my YouTube history and find it but the What the kind of finding of that neuroimaging was was that basically When you're a treated depressed patient, don't be tricked into thinking you're fixed your brain is pry is still very much primed To relapse into depression and the fact that you're staying at a depression is thanks to the tremendous advances of psychiatry With less you need to remind you the first psychotropic psychotropic medication Thorazine only came onto the market in the 1950s before that if you were schizophrenic or Severely depressed or severely anxious you got thrown into a mental asylum And I say this not to scare monger, but rather to say that stop for a moment and appreciate the Advancements in psychiatry that have been necessary to just get to the point that you could take a Pill every day and have your anxiety or your OCD or your depression Controlled yes, we haven't got to the point where there's some kind of a magic pill We can take that'll forever vanquish or depression anxiety or OCD But this is the best we have right now and I think my final comment to Hannah This is what I'll end the video with was I'm waiting for that magic pill or for that magic perhaps TMS or for Psychedelic therapy to advance Some kind of reliable and safe Intervention that will take place that will Permanently indefinitely cure depression and anxiety until then I think I would be insane To stop taking this medication only because I didn't like the fact that I have to take a pill every day to To feel good, you know what I have I have asthma here's my asthma inhaler just happened to be on my desk now I don't love the fact that I have to take this thing every day to breathe But it is what it is I don't think about it anymore and that's very much after one year on Lexapro. That's kind of the way I'm starting to think about Lexapro Keep one in your pocket pop a pill by one of those pill holders from Ali Express or from eBay or from Amazon Have a spare pill put it on your keys. Keep one in your car Just don't so just so it's a no-brainer You always have it put a reminder on your phone and meta-safe that you have to take it at a certain time and try to take it within either on time or within an hour of the alert going off and versus being untreated depressed and miserable and horrible and Spiraling and potentially God forbid feeling suicidal from time to time or increasingly so It's a good trade-off even though there are side effects. I won't go on anymore I hope I've got some cogent points across in this very stream of stream of Train of thought consciousness. Thank you guys for watching Periodically, there will be videos like this popping up on this YouTube channel so if you do want to get more now and again do stick around and Wishing everyone struggling everyone out there struggling with any mental illness whether it's depression anxiety ADHD bipolar schizophrenia success and please Just as a patient not as a doctor Don't beat yourself up over the need to take daily medication because there is enough beating up going on Without you adding to it for no reason and it's a blessing that in the year 2022 we have Effective albeit imperfect drugs available for treatment and don't spit in the face of science really it's taken all this time to get here use every Advantage you can get Including medications like these. Thank you guys for watching. Have a great one and stick around if you're gonna get more videos