Ah, clean

I think one of the worst things about being sick is that you spend so much time in bed, and if you're feverish you get...well, not quite as fresh as you'd like, and you don't really feel like bathing, either, so you just feel worse.

I'm at least to the point where I just had a nice long shower, and so I feel better.

I was watching a little TV before the shower (I must say, there really isn't much on Saturday nights, is there?) and found one show where an expert said that in 85% of the cases, depression can be treated within six weeks. I don't know if that's the case or not. It hasn't been my experience, or that of anyone I know. Once I was put on medication, it did help my mood immediately (although some of that may have been a placebo effect), but I'd it took about six months to get past the suicidal, severe aspects of the depression and about a year where I found I no longer felt depressed. It was very gradual. Part of that, I guess, is that they have to find the right medication and dosage. I was fortunate to respond to the first thing I was put on (Paxil). We decided to try that because of the social anxiety and OCD issues along with my depression, and it was useful in those cases. But even then, it takes awhile to work up dosage, and even when I was generally okay, around my menstruation I was still having severe depressive episodes brought on by hormones, so we tried Serzone (which left me zombified) and eventually just upped the Paxil a little. I've known other people who have had to go through several medicines to find the right one, or who responded to one, only to have it lose efficacy over time and had to start the process over. Some can't take Paxil, for example, if they have seizure activity or because it makes them severely nauseous. Every person I know who's dealt with anxiety or depression is on a different medication that works for them, or even a delicate mix. If it's the right prescription, then it seems the person feels completely normal, as opposed to drugged or emotionally flat.

Still, given that the expert was talking about preventing workplace violence/mass murders, and the trouble with identifying potential culprits so that the idea is to use employee assistance and other programmes to identify depression and treat it to prevent such tragedies, 6 weeks is probably reasonable for that. In that case, you don't so much want to get the person back to full potential but at least to a point where they're not going to storm the place with guns, right?