I’m not ashamed medication got me through the pandemic – but we need talking therapies too | Jenny Stevens
Prescription drugs helped my fraying mental health, but a lack of psychological support can undermine the good work they do
How did you get through lockdown? Was it baking or running or meditating? Maybe you took up art, or the guitar, or joinery – or just screaming into a pillow. For me, it was psychiatric medication. At present, I am on more meds than I have ever taken before – which says something as I spent a full year in a psychiatric hospital.
Before the pandemic, I was on antidepressants, working on getting slowly better from an eating disorder, managing depression and anxiety and the voices that yell or chatter – depending on the day – telling me I’m a failure, that I should stop breathing, that my friends and family hate me. Taking my meds significantly reduces the stretches of time I spend stagnant, gripped by blackness and staring at the cobwebs on my bedroom ceiling. They give me the fight I need to do weekly talking therapy, which in turn gives me the fight to get on with the job of living.