This topic is one of my pet peeves. I am a Psychologist and I try as hard as I can with depressed clients to get them to do things they enjoy. One of the main reasons for some kinds of depression is not having any meaningful activities or goals. If one of my clients wanted to take up diving, I'd encourage them as hard as I could. There is no evidence that SSRI's could hurt you while diving, and most depressed persons are not suicidal, only a small minority, and if they are suicidal, they can certainly find a way to kill themselves without signing up for a diving course, getting their gear together, going out on a boat, and drowning themselves!
Jeez!
DAN is very conservative and gives lots of generic advice. I would never say not to trust it but you have to keep in mind that they are going to discourage someone from diving if there is even a theoretical risk involved. Like the recently discussed topic of diabetes, DAN gave it as a prohibition to diving for years, then found out that a lot of diabetics were diving, then decided to study Diabetes and diving, and the guidelines now appear to be changing. The theoretical risk of diving with diabetes is turning out to be very rare, and they are reconsidering their opinion. Meantime, many persons with diabetes have been told that they couldn't dive.
Ernest Campbell, Scubadoc, repeated this advice about Depressed persons not diving, and I emailed him about it. I don't feel that it would be appropriate for me to try to say exactly what he told me, but I feel it is safe to say that he agreed that this should be evaluated on a case by case basis.
If you want to dive, dive. Your physician that prescribes your SSRI's will probably sign you off with no problems, as long as you're not suicidal, and if you are suicidal, you probably wouldn't be posting on a scuba forum.
Jeez.
And about Alcoholism, you will find that there are many, many, recovering persons diving. No reason not too. I routinely cave dive with several persons with a sobriety date.
Thanks for the question
Dave
