Posted by holymama on August 12, 2005, at 7:37:33
I've been in a 5/6 month depression funk, I'm bipolar and have reduced my meds to lithium and wellbutrin this summer. I wanted to get off paxil, since it wasn't helping with the depression anyway and I was guessing SSRIs were making me rapid cycle. Since getting off the paxil, I've been more stable -- stably depressed. Finally, after not being able to stand it any longer, I had a long talk with my pdoc, and the options she offered me were: depakote, topomax, or an SSRI. I'm afraid of Depakote! My nephew took it as a toddler, and gained a ton of weight on it and lost his personality. Of course, this was for severe epilepsy, so this was better than risking the seizures. Topomax I'm less scared of, but I am in Graduate school and have three kids, and need to have all of the brain power I can get, and isn't topomax also known as 'stupidmax'? I'm also worried that a mood stabilizer may take a while to touch the depression, and I start school in a few weeks. So I opted for Zoloft, which I have faith will bring me out of the depression....but in the long run it will cause me more problems -- cycling and instability. My pdoc says at the first sign of hypomania she will take me off the zoloft (and do what else, I'm not sure). In any case, as soon as this happens, I'll need to choose something else I'm sure. Does anyone have any thoughts for me?
~~Autumn~~
poster:holymama
thread:540562
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050811/msgs/540562.html