Posted by JD on June 17, 1999, at 16:36:28
In reply to please explain depression!!, posted by sandy on June 16, 1999, at 21:01:09
Hi Sandy,
I think I responded to your earlier posting, if your brother's the one who was also taking the oversedating four-drug combo.
Though I'd hardly want to deny the illness's psychological aspects, depression is indeed a biological and physiological syndrome too--as you realize, one that unfortunately usually needs more than a simple directive to "pull it together". The fact that your brother claims to have had mood problems from an early age, in addition to his substance-abuse problem, leads me to suspect that he has some kind of real predisposition for such difficulties (either inborn or due to early experiences), and that his depression is probably complex and difficult to treat. There has been some interesting work done lately concerning people with such mixed mood and substance-abuse problems--you may want to make sure that he's seeing a psychiatrist who's really familiar with such terrain. More specifically, you may note that there's been a lot of discussion on this board lately about naltrexone (brand name Revia in the U.S.), an opiate-blocker medication currently being used in alcoholism treatment that shows great promise as an add-on for refractory depression as well. You may even want to bring this up with your brother or his doctors, as it seems that naltrexone has really helped some people deal with alcohol/drug cravings and with depressions that don't seem to be responding well to other treatments. In some patients, the two problems likely have everything to do with one another, both on the physical and psychological levels.
I hope things go well for your brother.
Best regards,
JD> I posted earlier about my brother who says he has been depressed since he was nine ( now 48). He is on all kinds of drugs right now and pretty much out of it. I wanted to hear from antone on what being depressed is all about. I really cannot relate but need to to help my brother. It is very easy for me to say , geez get on with it man we all have our problems, but if this is indeed a condition I would like to understand the feelings behind it and what it feels like. He has not expressed this to me and I think part of that may be because his unlieing problem is alcoholism. He has been in a hospital for that and remained sober for 6 years in which none of this depression stuff surfaced but since he has fallen on bad times he seems to fall back on depression and drug therapy. Please all your inputs to what it is like would be appreciated as I just want the best for my brohter anf want the right proble treated...i.e. alcoholism vs depression.
> sandy
poster:JD
thread:7466
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990601/msgs/7491.html