Why didn't I take antidepressants when offered in the psychiatric ward?

I started 2012 in a psychiatric ward as a psychiatric prisoner. The first few days I was a total wreck. Sobbing and withdrawn or angry and unstable.

They offered me antidepressants along with the other medication I now take. I refused the antidepressants which may seem a strange thing to do.

The simple reason was my life was shit. My situation was shit. Everything was shit. I was trapped in a psychiatric ward with little money at the end of a very bad year and the start of what I expect will be little different.

This sounds like a good reason to take antidepressants but I didn't think so. It is normal to feel bad when things are bad. It isn't a question of fitting the clinical diagnosis of depression. It is life circumstances and the environment being shit so the natural emotional reaction is to feel awful. This is exactly how I felt but it is a human response not a spurious and incomprehensible feeling.

I have recovered and my circumstances are a little better, better than shit. I am without a fixed abode but this is being resolved soon too. I don't feel positive about the future nor do I feel good about positive changes like moving from being a detained patient to being in a recovery/crisis house nor getting a more permanent place to live. I feel few pleasures if any, but I can laugh and joke and pretend things are okay and maintain the facade of normality. I can talk and smile and communicate and interact most of the time.

Inside I don't feel good and I'm praying for death every night. This morning I woke up feeling bleak even though I'm a step closer to a better life. Perhaps it was just forcing myself to get up earlier or perhaps it is depression which doesn't fit the expected symptoms or presentation.

The key thing is when I feel antidepressants are appropriate. As things are getting better I should be feeling better. Positive events should be making me happier, in the short term at least. They're not though and I don't know why. My emotional responses are not as I would expect them and I'm tired of feeling shit.

I can feel good though even if it is short lasting. I still have this part of my emotional range. It is just most of the time I don't feel good and perhaps my emotional range is skewed by prolonged misery, I.e. my version of feeling good is another person's unhappiness and my unhappiness would kill someone else.

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