Posted by Ritch on May 30, 2002, at 7:43:03
In reply to Types of depression - I'm frustrated, posted by BarbaraCat on May 30, 2002, at 0:47:17
I think you are right about the cortisol thing. In my case it tends to be anxiety > sleep disturbance > aggravated depression. The best mechanism I have found to control it is to work *around* my sleep quality and length. That is, if I am sleeping too much or too little or it's interrupted I adjust my meds to bring it back into a "normal" range. When the sleep gets fixed "right" my moods normalize throughout the daytime. If I get an early morning awakening, I spring into action and make sure I take something at bedtime that will make me snooze through and set my alarm at a time to prevent me from oversleeping.
Mitch
> I am so totally confused about all these different brands of depression. It's like splitting hairs. I get two kinds of depression, 1. the dreary gray sludge kind, 2. the panic world is coming to an end anguish kind. I can understand the first as being garden variety depression, but I don't know what the second kind is. It's the second kind that is particularly horrible and scary and brings me close to the edge. I wish I knew what it was so I could treat it. It feels like an electric nightmare.
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> Anyone remember those series of cat paintings done by someone at the beginning and last stages of a psychotic episode? The first is a nice little kitty cat and the last one is this jagged edged psychotic wild-eyed haunted cat. My 'bad depressions' for lack of what else to call them are like that last cat. The first kind I can stand, but these last-cat kinds are unbearable. They're not getting addressed or treated (except by default) cause everything's getting lumped into a one size fits all depression category. Hey, if I have psychotic depressions, then fine, give me some anti-psychosis meds. I have a hunch that it's cortisol toxicity caused by an overamped nervous system. Wasn't it RU-486 still in development drug that supposedly addressed the whole HPA axis cortisol thing? - Barbara
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poster:Ritch
thread:107896
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020525/msgs/108029.html