Welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear that you are struggling right now.

Medication is very much an individual decision between you and your healthcare providers. For some, it can be a key aspect of their long-term treatment plan. For others, it is a stepping stone to making coping skill acquisition more accessible, and may be used temporarily. For still others, it is unnecessary or, in rare cases, damaging even when used judiciously. With regard to stepping down from medication: for most psychoactive medications, responsible prescribers will gradually taper the dosage down to nothing, rather than taking you off cold turkey.

With regard to talk therapy, most likely you will be looking not for a psychiatrist (although they often have this training, it is highly unlikely that insurance will pay for one), but more likely a psychologist, clinical social worker, or licensed mental health counselor, professional counselor, etc. (there are different titles in different states), which is (other than the psychologist, who is at the doctoral level) typically a master's level clinician.

Evidence-based talk therapies for depression generally circle back to skills-based treatments that are some variation of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), or related therapies (e.g., DBT, RET). All of them acknowledge the interactions between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and leverage that connection to affect feelings by correcting cognitive distortions, and making healthier choices with our behaviors.

All the best. Others have grappled with this and come to solutions that treasure and celebrate lives, yours included.


...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...