Posted by blueberry on August 8, 2006, at 15:13:57
In reply to Another Failed Med. Cocktail.....Help..Suggestions, posted by invisibleman15010 on August 5, 2006, at 13:20:02
Just some ideas to ponder...
Top psychiatrists are now saying that antidepressant resistance and poopout is a sign of bipolar spectrum, even in the total absence of any mania. It is actually a bipolar that involves depression plus something else...the something else being anxiety and/or agitation and/or insomnia and/or poor antidepressant response.
That being said, you might consider strategies other than antidepressants. For example, choose your favorite antidepressant thus far and add to it zyprexa. Or lithium. Or depakote. For bipolar depression and for unipolar treatment resistant depression, prozac plus zyprexa has a good track record. In any case, get off the antidepressant bandwagon and go into areas that are new, whether they make sense or not. Logic says antidepressants are not the right mechanism, so something else must be.
It is just my opinion, but ECT should not be feared. It has a very high success rate. It also has a way of making medications work that previously did not work. The drawback of possible memory loss might not be a bad thing if there is a long depressed period in which it would be good to forget some things. Memory loss does not always happen though. ECT has a high relapse rate (about 50%), but that is where followup ECT treatments and/or medications play a role. And while many point to the high relapse rate, they fail to recognize that the relapse rate on medications is close to 100%. ECT plus medication followup has been highly recommended to me by a several different doctors and a handful of nurses. They had nothing but good things to say about it and how they've seen miraculous turnarounds. They don't make commission sales on it, so I don't think they had any hidden motive for being so supportive of it. They've just seen it work very well very often.
poster:blueberry
thread:674021
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060802/msgs/674951.html