Posted by dave_fox on July 1, 2002, at 1:46:17
A friend of mine is very sad and I am wondering how long it needs to be before she can be considered to have depression?
She is 29 and generally has a low mood. For two or so years now she has been trying to get into drama school but she can't get through the auditions. This year she tried one last drama school and failed to pass the audition.
I think she saw it as her last hope slipping away because afterwrds she became very sad. Very very sad. She took to bed for two days because she was too drained to get up. (She doesn't work on account of some other medical problem so she was not skipping work.)
Her profound sadness has lasted for about 10 days. Maybe it is more akin to grief in her situation than just sadness. But even 10 days later she seems very deeply affected by it. She complains of having no energy, of sleeping in the day, of not sleeping at night, etc. (Some elements of this bad sleep pattern was present before).
As a former depression sufferer I know that depression can last a long time and that 10 days is not really very much time at all in these matters. However I am keen that she gets any antidepressive meds as soon as possible in order to prevent her hitting a deep trough which might be much harder to get out of.
Of course, antidepressive meds take a few weeks to kick in and that might be an argument for holding off. OTOH it might be an argument to get started as soon as possible.
She is reluctant to visit her doc about this. (Yes, yes, yes, I know it's silly.) In fact she is still bewildered and sad and confused and exhausted. I don't want to encourage her to visit her doc if it is far too early to consider taking anti-depressant meds.
I might add that she suffers from OCD and has tried all the SSRIs with no success (and she attend therapy). Her next candidate med (which she does not really want to try) is Effexor. It seems to me that it might be useful to try this med for her current mood as much as for her OCD.
What do you think? Do you think she is having a normal reaction to a profound disappointment? After what period of time do you think it becomes something which could be treated with meds?
poster:dave_fox
thread:111107
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020628/msgs/111107.html