Posted by zeugma on August 2, 2004, at 5:58:42
In reply to Anafrail at a Therapeutic dose. » ace, posted by Sad Panda on August 2, 2004, at 2:23:26
Hi
I don't know if 100% improvement is possible or practical for a number of reasons.
First, the more complicated the cocktail the more types of interaction become possible. I would even include talk therapy in this, because CBT was added to my regime in the attempt to mitigate my debilitating social phobia. I worked hard at my exercises, but found the overall effect to be anxiogenic to the point where I seriously considered hopitalization. Also, there was an 'interaction' between CBT and my med regime because my psychiatrist was confident that CBT would lower my anxiety, and hence maintained me on my medications despite evidence of worsening anxiety. It was only when CBT was terminated, on my own initiative, becuse it was obvious that things were getting out of hand, that I was prescribed an anxiolytic, which resulted in immediate improvement.
This is not to say that CBT wouldn't work for you. From my (casual) perusal of the data, CBT has more effectiveness in OCD than in severe social phobia. There are other therapeutic options that may work better. I don't know. I've experimented with different 'dosages' (i.e. frequency) of talk therapy. The problem I have found (and this may or may not be applicable to you) is that as improvements occur in one part of life, this can cause other problems to come to the fore. When I was literally too depressed to eat or sleep, my main goal was to stabilize my weight and sleep pattern. I felt (rightly) that my career would only move forward when I got these problems under control. Now that I am no longer anorexic and insomniac, I have other issues to deal with, such as finding an effective treatment for my ADD and avoidant personality disorder, which cause tremendous unhappiness. Unfortunately, the most effective treatments for ADD cause anorexia and insomnia for me, which in turn induce further depression. The drugs counteract each other, in other words, even if this is not a pharmacodynamic effect.
To conclude by echoing what others have said, no one goes through life with no symptoms of anything whatsoever. I have found it necessary to be patient and realistic when using these various modalities to get my symptoms under control.
poster:zeugma
thread:372783
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040730/msgs/373060.html