Posted by baseball55 on January 2, 2016, at 20:23:53
In reply to Re: Happy new year » baseball55, posted by SLS on January 2, 2016, at 8:15:47
> Do you cycle more than 4 times a year?Sometimes.
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> If you should ever want to investigate other drug treatments, perhaps Lamictal or low dosage lithium (300 mg/day) would prevent relapses. Also, dosages of lithium as low as 100 mg/day are supposed to help prevent Alzheimer's Dementia. That is one reason why I plan to take lithium indefinitely. My risk of contracting Alzheimer's is elevated substantially due to the severity and length of depression. I would try Lamictal first, though. It has shown itself to have antidepressant properties in both unipolar and bipolar disorders, and is known to prevent rapid cycling in bipolar disorder. Perhaps it would help with rapid cyclicity in unipolar depression, too. I know of no investigations that studied this question specifically.
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I take 300mg lamictal and have been for a few years. I exercise but, you're right. When the depression hits, nothing helps. Friends tell me, don't isolate,we'll go for a walk, lunch, etc. But if I can manage to get myself to see someone, all I do is cry and they end up saying - have you called your doctor/therapist? Do you need to be in the hospital? I have a DBT therapist and she used to tell me to sit with it, watch it ebb and flow. But it doesn't ebb. She now focuses exclusively on controlling thoughts of suicide to keep me out of the hospital. My doctor says I have a chronic recurrent depression. He's a great believer in lamictal to reduce the lows I fall into.
> Do you exercise? I don't think it would help much once an episode of depression is triggered, but it might help prevent it.
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> > So I'm sorry, Scott, if you feel life has been stolen from you. Chronic, unremitting depression is a horrible disease.
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> I was born in 1960. I was moderately depressed by 1970. I became severely depressed abruptly in 1976 with social anxiety. Between June, 1987 and February, 1988, I experienced a true remission achieved through treatment with antidepressants. I experienced a few drug-induced acute manic reactions. That's about it.
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> - Scott
poster:baseball55
thread:1085073
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20160101/msgs/1085112.html