Posted by smith562 on October 19, 2004, at 3:03:07
In reply to Unlikelihood of remission, posted by Ilene on October 18, 2004, at 22:38:15
Hey Ilene,
Sounds like your in a very frustrating position and suffering alot. Assuming you have tried all the medications out on the market (hopefully including Nardil and Parnate and combos of antidepressant with lithium or antiepileptic) you may want to consider ECT. Dr Steven Sackiem at Columbia has a treatment resistant program. I have heard at some points depression *can not* be helped by meds and ECT needs to use in order to make you responsive to meds again. Then after ECT he usually puts people on a TCA or effexor augmented with lithium with tremendous success.
All this being said, ECT often isnt needed and many treatment resistant people respond to some sort of antidepressant/mood stablizer combo (most being in this bipolar spectrum category).
Martha Manning wrote a great book on ECT (she being treatment resistant and a psychologist by training). She now is finally stable on zoloft, wellbutrin, lithium and depakote. So she was probably bipolar spectrum all along and wasn't depressed typically, but in a dysphoric mania.
Hope this helped. There are new meds in the future too.
Smith
poster:smith562
thread:404563
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041018/msgs/404630.html