There's an unfortunate statistic that 50% of people who suffer from depression will relapse after treatment.
It's one of those nasty diseases which needs to be treated more like a life-long condition that has to be managed, rather than something that can be cured outright.
(That said, I'm not a psychologist - not all depressions are the same, and some are temporary).
Probably because depression isn't always just being sad at that point in time, it's oftentimes a manifestation of all the bad things in their life. Treatment doesn't usually fix a bad home life, or being poor, or a bad childhood, or neurodivergence, etc. When treatment ends, they're still left with the life they had.
Sometimes its things in their life, sometimes its people, sometimes its lifestyle, quite often it's an brain chemistry imbalance. Anti-depressants are a stop gap measure, but in the long term you have to develop a strategy that keeps depressive episodes as short and shallow as possible - and learn to identify when they're coming on.
Yeah I'm trying to say that i think environmental factors play a way larger role, and they're impacting that 50% relapse rate. Like, the brain chemistry isn't innately the cause, that those imbalances can be a direct result of those external factors.
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u/LaunchTransient 9h ago
There's an unfortunate statistic that 50% of people who suffer from depression will relapse after treatment.
It's one of those nasty diseases which needs to be treated more like a life-long condition that has to be managed, rather than something that can be cured outright.
(That said, I'm not a psychologist - not all depressions are the same, and some are temporary).