Posted by Ritch on February 28, 2002, at 9:40:08
In reply to Re: psychotic depression » Ritch, posted by Elizabeth on February 28, 2002, at 1:37:11
> Mitch, could you tell me more about your friend who had delusional depression? What sort of delusions did she have? Were they considered mood-congruent?
> -elizabeth
Hi,That episode happened to her back when I was just out of high school (around 1980). She had been hospitalized when she was living in xxx after she shot some guy that was threatening to beat her up (I don't think she killed him). It was an unregistered weapon and she got out of going to prison and wound up in the state hospital. I think she was having some type of PTSD reaction related to the shooting. Anyhow, she came back and was visiting her family and went and seen a pdoc that gave her a big depot injection of trifluoperazine and she felt better for about a day and then she got rapidly depressed. We got scared and took her to the ER and they admitted her for a 72 hour observation. Then she came back with Navane. Well, she came back from that feeling a *little* better, but she rapidly became very depressed again within a week. This time we took her to a local GP and he put her on a high dose of Triavil (amitripytline+perphenazine) for two weeks, then switched her to plain amitriptyline after that and she was fine after about 3-4 weeks. Then he lowered her amitrip. dose down to a maint. level of 50mg/day and she has been fine since as far as I know (I haven't heard from her in several years). I didn't get a chance to personally hear any of her *delusions*. She *did* speak a lot of *nonsense* to her Mom and her sister, and they told me about some of it. She was generally very listless, uncommunicative, had no appetite. We were spoon feeding her concentrated vegetable proteins, etc. She was down to skin and bones-very scary. I think all that happened was is she shot that guy and had tremendous guilt and PTSD related to it and had to get out of going to prison, so with a helpful pdoc they copped an insanity plea and got her into the hospital. Well, she hauled her case history back with her and what happened is what happens to a lot of people. You see a new pdoc and they just go by what everybody else said about you and don't take a fresh look. Antipsychotics by themselves clearly made her worse, and she was fine on just the amitrip. for at least a year or two after all that happened.
Mitch
poster:Ritch
thread:95129
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020222/msgs/95819.html