clinical depression-not responding to treatment
I have a friend who has clinical depression which does not seem to be responding to treatment
I have a friend with clinical depression who is not responding
to treatment. Using Lithium now. Has gone through ECT. Are
there any treatments out there which may have been successfulfor a
nonresponder?
there are many available treatments for clinical depression that
is refractory to treatment. It is not clear, however, what
antidepressants have been tried, or at what dose, or for how long.
Lithium is okay for unipolar and bipolar patients, but are you saying
she's bipolar? Then alternative agents include verapamil and valproic
acid. Has she been screened for medical conditions that may present
like depression? If she has regular depression, has she been tried on
SSRI's, tricyclic agents, MAO inhibitors? Some psychiatrists use
Cytomel potentiation... Some use combination therapy--like trazadone +
an SSRI. It's a complicated issue...
Upon reading the some of the posts regarding psychiatry and depression;
I felt my own sense of depair. My coworkers and myself have witnessed
the damage caused by well meaning "program people" who openly share
their belief that psychiatry is a sham or that depression comes from not
working the program of AA properly.
Clinical depression is not something that can be treated by "working the
program." Utilizing the fellowship may help lighten the burden that
clinical depression places on those who struggle with it. Genuine
clinical depression is a very real and debilitating illness. Untreated,
it may lead to total feelings of hopelessness and despair. This kind of
hopelessness does not go away by "putting the plug in the jug" and
"working the steps." Symptoms can be subtle - like a general malaise. Or
they can be so overwhelming that a person cannot function at all. It
also is the cause of many suicides.
While the current psychiatric treatments for clinical depression and
other serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, are not perfect,
they are a tremendous improvement over what used to be available i.e.
shock treatments, massive doses of sedatives, halucenigenics, even
lobotomies etc.
As a health care worker, I genuinely and sincerely beg you - please do
not put down people who use modern psychiatric treatments for their
depression or any other mental illness. Well meaning, albeit misguided
advice, can and does have deadly consequences.