Posted by Elizabeth on January 14, 2002, at 19:46:37
In reply to Success w/ Parnate, posted by Seamus2 on January 11, 2002, at 19:18:38
Congratulations. :-) Parnate's a good drug and relatively tolerable for a lot of people compared to other ADs. I'm glad you've found something that is working well for you.
I did try both the augmentation strategies that CalvaryHill suggests and I wasn't impressed. I don't think it's that easy to predict what sorts of things will work for any particular person. Unless there's a specific reason to believe they'll help, I don't think that dopamine antagonists (antipsychotics, like Risperdal) should be first-line augmentors for depression (since they have the potential to make depression worse for some people). The AD augmentors that have the best success records are stimulants, lithium, and T3. Although these require monitoring, I'd urge caution also about anticonvulsant augmentation, because its efficacy is questionable and because there may be unknown risks (my bias here is that I've developed what appear to be complex partial seizures after having tried, over a period of a few years, a bunch of different anticonvulsant "mood stabilizers" for non-bipolar depression -- the anticonvulsant trials and the seizures may be unrelated, but I do have to wonder). I haven't been too impressed with the stories I've heard or the studies I've read about pindolol, or with my own experience on it, but it's relatively safe (except for people with certain types of cardiac arrhythmias).
Best wishes,
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:89782
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020110/msgs/90167.html