Posted by Anna Laura on December 28, 2001, at 0:03:06
In reply to having a child, will my depression pass on?, posted by adamie on December 27, 2001, at 12:49:42
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> me and a girl are planning on having a child in the future. my depression has not been genetic. my depression was caused by vitamin A overdose due to a medication called accutane. The accutane is like taking 40 times the daily recommended dosage of vitamin A literally. horribly dangerous medication. What made it all a very severe depression was taking a suppliment a few days after stopping the accutane. this increased the effect of the accutane and my depression turned from somewhat mild to constant mind torture. every minute painful to be alive. i couldn't do anything. i couldn't even read simple sentences. i couldn't sleep. no appetite. heart pounding, sides of head burning. then it got a bit better. but then worse again to the point of suicidal depression. but now 6 months with this accutane effect i am on a new combo of meds and often feel livable. huge depression left but at least i dont feel like dying constantly.
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> this accutane depression may or may not go away. it is supossed to go away over time. over many years. but it may not. taking that suppliment made my accutane depression so much more severe than other people who suffered from accutane depression. the extreme severity makes me wonder if it will ever go away.
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> if i were to have a child in the future would this depression pass on to it? or would it not since this depression is caused by a med... vitamin a overdose. or would it pass on anyway since it's like my brain is changed due to what happened. i dont feel like the same person i was before. and i feel like i am somewhat brain damaged. maybe it's just the depression which prevents me from being able to think.
Even if your brain had changed, your genes surely didn't ! It's impossible for your child to inherit depression as long as it has been provoked by external factors such as meds.
I.E.: if a person gets blind because of, let's say, a car accident, he is not going to pass it on to his child because this kind of "information" is not written in his genes. The situation would be different if a person is born blind.
There are exceptional few cases where you can pass "acquired informations" on to your child though; this will occur in the case the external event has modified your genes: i.e. radiations.
If i were you i would ask myself wether my depression was biological in the first place though.
The fact that has been triggered by a medication doesn't imply it wasn't biological in the first place; you might have a genetic predisposition to depression, which means your depression treshold is low because of genetic factors; you may want to investigate your family to see if someone is suffering from depression or had a depression episode in the past.
poster:Anna Laura
thread:87959
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20011222/msgs/88004.html