Debunking a theory.

Someone once said that if you go to combat, you don't need therapy.

Today I saw my GP who, after hearing a stripped-down and not-so-romanticised summary of my summer, suggested I go see a psychologist at least five times for psychotherapy (ack...). She also strongly recommended the use of anti-depressants.

After that I had a half-obligatory check-up visit at the Polytechnic's nurse. Albeit I had tried to do the contrary, eventually I had to give her a shortened version of my summer, otherwise she might have thought I have some physical condition causing headaches, chest pain, tiredness and such. She, in turn, also recommended anti-depressants as well as sleeping pills. In the end I had to make another appointment with her to get the actual check-up stuff done (e.g. blood pressure, weight, height...).

They're both either all too eager to prescribe medicine, even if there's no actual need for it but with a "just in case" mentality, or I'm doing worse than I thought. The GP gave me a follow-up appointment for next Tuesday; I have to fill in a questionnaire (BDI-Beckin depressioasteikko, to be precise) for that. I looked up the categorisations from http://personal.inet.fi/koti/zippoland/~fig11mp/fin/masteana.htm, according to which I’m suffering from severe depression. I doubt it. I get up every morning, go to school every day, I talk with my classmates if they happen to be around and we have something to talk about (on Tuesday we were just kicking Cosmopolitan’s ass and labelled the compulsory PE lessons at school as ihqu which to us is a synonym for torture), and go to Combat classes every week at least twice. So what if my already low interest in sex has dropped even further? So what if my eating habits are not healthy and regular; when have they been? So what if I don’t like the way I look; who does? And if your body hurts, everyone would worry about it!

The test can be found here (http://www.ahjos.net/beck.htm) in Finnish if you’re interested.