Therapy allows a person to make sense of the new self he has attained on medication, and to accept the loss of self that occurred during a breakdown. You need to be reborn after a severe episode, and you need to learn the behaviours that may protect against relapse. You need to run your life differently from how you ran it before. “It’s so hard to regulate your life, sleep, diet, exercise, under any circumstances,” comments Norman Rosenthal of the NIMH. “Think how hard it is when you’re depressed! You need a therapist as a sort of coach, to keep you at it. Depression is an illness, not a life
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