Posted by JonW on June 11, 2002, at 16:32:53
In reply to All mood stablizers and no antidepressants?, posted by JennyJen on June 11, 2002, at 7:27:49
Hi Jenny,
Your frustration is more than understandable, we've all been there and most of us still are :) But please, don't apologize for asking questions and trying to get better!
What is it that makes you think that you are bipolar? By Dr. Phelp's definition, it's not a question of whether you are or you aren't but *how* bipolar you are. This is logical to me, but it seems important that there's a certain undetermined distance you can go from unipolar without a bipolar diagnoses being useful and may even be detrimental in a way.
One thing that Dr. Liebowitz has said to me that may be important is that it's a lot easier to stabilize someone on Nardil using thyroid than to try to stabilize someone on an SSRI. I would presume this is also true with other MAOIs but we only talked about Nardil so I can't say for sure.
When you say Parnate gave you a partial response and you've failed multiple other ADs, how long were the trials? A get the sense that a lot of people here, bipolar folks in particular, have a history of really short drug trials. People with rapid cycling may get an initial "hypomanic" reaction and have a hard time believing that it actually takes many weeks to work and then give up on it once they cycle down. My other psydoc once told me that some bipolar patients can take ADs like candy and pop 'em like they would an advil for a depressive episode. Anyhow, I just thought I'd mention these thoughts.
I think Mitch's suggestion of an ADs + mood stabilizer is an excellent idea. If you haven't tried this before you should definitely suggest this to your psydoc. What exactly are your symptoms? What makes you think you have this or that? With a list of your symptoms, several people here may be able to point you in a helpful direction.
I've refered to this post in several of my posts and so perhaps I'm being a bit redundant but I think it speaks to what you are going through and it may give you some hope. Here's a recent post by Dr. Goldberg:
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020525/msgs/108025.html
Hang in there,
Jon
poster:JonW
thread:109388
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020609/msgs/109507.html