Posted by yxibow on January 31, 2007, at 1:51:05
In reply to Do you have to get a lot worse before better?, posted by blueberry1 on January 30, 2007, at 16:54:45
Cymbalta can take a very long time to be useful. I think it took nearly two months before I had an epiphany of sorts at 80mg. I currently take 120mg, which, while there is no proven study that says 120 can be better than 60, nonetheless I have heard of people on that amount.
One has to also remember that MDD or any type of depression is a moving target. There will always be three steps forward, two steps back, another step forward. There's no prediction of what could happen but it is true that one has to sometimes stick it out with an antidepressant to really gain any benefits.
While you may not respond well to SSRIs, others do, and often quit before the real benefits set in, only to notice that once they quit they realized they felt better on them. That's been my experience with SSRIs at any rate.
Now nobody is saying you have to walk across hot coals for months. If a medication is really inducing effects that are unexpected, it is possible the diagnosis may be something different than previously thought. People with BP will respond differently than MDD or dysthymia, and that's the reason that not everything will work for one person.
But to answer the question, yes, unfortunately sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, and that doesn't just mean medication. Medication alone may help a disorder, but therapy and hard work with a caring therapist can make things even better and I wish the treatment models of insurance companies provided better treatment plans for people with serious depressive disorders.
- to better healthJay
poster:yxibow
thread:728186
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070125/msgs/728336.html