Posted by cubbybear on April 15, 2004, at 2:15:47
In reply to thanks!!, posted by joslynn on April 14, 2004, at 8:38:29
>> However, while I have had two severe depressions, they were very spread out, and in between I wasn't on meds. So the question is...do I really need them forever or will that second episode be the last, even if I go off meds? Unfortunately, there is no way to predict what will happen.
Right--there's never any way to predict how you'll feel (and, in my case, a new bout of depression is always triggered by stressful life circumstances), but unfortunately the statistics show that the likelihood of having a depressive relapse at some future date increases with every subsequent relapse (I think the term is "increases exponentially").
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> I wish there was some test where they could say, your depression was helped XX% by talk therapy, XX% by lifestyle changes and only X% by the meds. So you can stop taking the meds if you keep up the other changes.It would be great if psychiatry and psychopharmacology made such quantifying possible, but as things now stand, it's still a lot of hit and miss, trial and error.
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poster:cubbybear
thread:335735
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040412/msgs/336536.html