Posted by SLS on February 11, 2003, at 10:24:21
In reply to Re: Treatment for suicide, posted by KRISSY on February 11, 2003, at 6:55:03
Hi.
Treat the anxiety immediately!
I'm not sure I have anything helpful to say, but I'll try anyway. What I describe here are things that work for me, and are not components of any prescribed therapeutic method, so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
People seem to be most likely to become suicidal when they are experiencing anxiety. Is this true of you? If so, perhaps it makes sense to aggressively treat the anxiety separately while you continue to pursue treatments appropriate for your disorder. Benzodiazepines (Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin, etc.)might be the best choice to build a bridge until an effective antidepressant treatment is found. An antidepressant response will most likely act to reduce the anxiety should anxiety be a component integral to the depressive disorder itself.
If you can, take note of what thoughts or issues are associated with your worst anxieties. It is all to easy to focus on a painful past and anticipate a doomed future while in a depressed state. Even if the anxiety you experience is 100% of biological origin and integral to your depressive disorder, it can still affect the way you think and feel, so as to provoke increases in depressive and catastrophic thinking and feelings of gloom and doom. Things get dangerous very quickly: depression makes anxiety worse which, in turn, makes depression worse, which, in turn, makes anxiety worse... etc. It is a cycle of escalating symptoms.
(depressive thoughts ->) anxiety -> depressive thoughts -> more anxiety -> more severe depressive thoughts and feelings of helplessness -> paralyzing anxiety and feelings of being trapped or doomed -> suicidal ideation, isolation -> anxiety, frustration, anger, hopelessness -> suicide
In summary, it is crucial for you to reduce your level of anxiety in order to avoid becoming suicidal and giving medications every chance of working. Stress, depression, and anxiety become a burden on the system and produces resistance against the processes that improve brain function. You can try to address the anxiety by mitigating it with medication and/or using psychotherapeutic resources and coping tools specific to reducing negative and depressive thinking. Accomplishing either should help break or minimize the cycle of symptom escalation.
Psychotherapy might offer an effective method to reduce depression and anxiety enough so that it allows you to move forward and perhaps foster some mood stability. Given the frequency with you become suicidal, I would urge you to seek counseling as soon as possible to help you get through this difficult period. The treatment of depression still involves to a large extent trial-and-error. It might take some time to find a treatment you respond to.
Good luck.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:140514
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030208/msgs/140552.html