One aspect of treating depression that often frustrates and ultimately derails those suffering from it from successfully treating it is finding the specific antidepressant that works for them. As others have pointed out, there are myriad medicines out there and drs will often first go with the med they are most familiar with-and many times that will not be the medicine that is right for the patient. However, the patient doesn’t want to “make waves”, considering the somewhat taboo subject at hand; or the patient may feel frustrated and hopeless after trying a few different meds with no good results. Don’t give up simply because the first one or two antidepressants don’t work (after giving them the proper time to work of course), there are many options out there.
Well, there’s a hospital a few miles from me that is trialing it. I am completing the application form now, and I should be able to write a personal review should I be selected.
Honestly, I think you would be amazed if you found out how many people you know who have similar depression & anxiety problems, and/or who are taking meds for it. I’m not even joking. You are not alone, GreenTreeFrog. Not by a long shot. There’s nothing to be ashamed in from this condition.
If a friend or family member told me about their depression, I would tell them about my own struggles with it too. I would tell them that it was a hassle, finding the right drug therapy and the right therapist for me - but it was so worth the effort. I would give them a referral to my therapist, if they wanted one. I would suggest they try reading The New Mood Therapy, by David Burns, which is a book I find very helpful. I would try not to overwhelm them, but I would emphasize that there’s help, even if it’s hard to see sometimes.
Depression runs in my family. Not everyone has it, but we seem to lose a person a generation to depression-linked suicide
So I tend to take people seriously when they say they have it. I also strongly encourage them to get treatment.
The shame/less than you feelings could be the depression classic. I’m tired–just PM me. If your family tells you to buck up or snap out of it they are The Wrong People to tell.
I warn you, the last person who told me they were depressed got a hug. A Big Hug.
And I’m not a huggy person so it was awkward.
Heartfelt, but awkward.
Scratch that, they said I was not suitable as I haven’t taken an antidepressant in the last year
I would ask what meds if any they are taking. I have been through a plethora and none have helped. My singular favorite moment in life is going to bed.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’m always finding I’m not eligible for things because I’ve taken too many medications, never because I haven’t taken enough! Hang in, though; they might start up a study without the med requirement.
Hah! I didn’t know anybody else felt that way. I look forward to sleeping like little kids look forward to a trip to Disneyland.
GreenTreeFrog, you can see from this thread that you are far from alone in dealing with depression. I doubt you feel that all of the people posting in this thread should be ashamed of themselves, so why should you feel any shame over having this very common malady?
I would think “HALLELUJAH! Someone who can admit they have it!” Both of my parents have had exogenous depressions* at different times, and their denial was one of the things that made it more difficult to deal with. Their friend Father Mateo had endogenous depression: he’d made sure his friends knew it and that when he got overly gloomy they’d ask “have you taken your pills?” - it was no different than checking whether the diabetics had appropriate snacks.
Then I would ask whether they’re in treatment and whether there’s anything I can help with.
- For some reason, I hear this from Spanish psychiatrists a lot but not in English. Exogenous depression is one with a clear external trigger, such as a death in the family: a correct mourning process will remove that one, an incorrect process will encyst it and make it permanent, Lithium won’t do shit. Endogenous depression is one which is biochemical in origin (and which may also have encysted, if not treated properly): the kind for which therapy may or may not be needed but pills will absolutely be.
I have had chronic depression since puberty. Why on earth would I be ashamed of it? That’s . . . depressing.
That’s a very interesting article. It’s also very interesting (and encouraging) that there are so many researchers exploring the use of unusual medications to treat depression. I’m not sure if you looked at the wikipedia page for scopolamine, but I followed a link in the cites there to find this clinical trial, which is studying the effect of transdermal scopolamine in depression and bipolar disease. Unfortunately, I would be excluded from the study group for that trial.
My doctor, in his infinite weirdness, has decided to try me on mirtazapine, the curative potential of which both he and I assess as “meh.”
Once upon a time, a doc had me on mirtazapine (a.k.a. Remeron), allegedly to help me sleep. That, it did. It’s also allegedly an anti-depressant. But later, another doc told me that it’s more typically used as an anti-psychotic, and he wondered what that earlier doc thought my diagnosis really was.
If you feel (as several posts up-thread suggested or implied) that sleeping is the best way for a depressed person to spend one’s time, then mirtazapine may be just the thing for you.
ETA: I see that you, Sudden Kestrel, wrote one of the up-thread posts I referred to (#49).
I’m at the point in the treatment of this disorder (going on 20 years for this “episode”) where unconventional therapies like anti-psychotics, anti-narcoleptics, etc., are the only remaining weapons in the pharmaceutical arsenal. I don’t have any problems with psychosis—not that I’d necessarily know if I did—but since it does have a slightly different mode of action than the other scores of drugs I’ve tried, I’ll give it a shot. I don’t mind sedation as a side effect; I don’t have any reason to be awake at a particular time these days.
I did tell my doctor that the next prescription I wanted to try was .45-caliber ammunition. He liked that :D.
My brother came out to me that he was depressed; apparantly he’d been driving around with a home-made bomb attempt, and was looking for a place to set it off, with him in the car, that wouldn’t hurt anyone else. 
I don’t remember exactly what I said to him, but after he left I did the only thing I could think of, which was to call 911, explain the situation, and ask that they please get him some help. Which they did. Which I’m forever grateful for.
If a family member told me they had depression, the first thing out of my mouth would be “how can I help?”
I’ve suffered from bouts of endogenous (see above post) depression since I was eleven years old. I have always been emotionally fragile, and I’ve taken some genuine lumps over the years which have contributed. Each bout has been worse than the last, and the last one . . . well, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out alive. I was fortunate enough that a separate medical condition caused me to change medications - I stopped taking oral contraceptives altogether - and my depression suddenly lifted. So, it was genuinely, unmistakably a neurochemical problem.
My father has depression, and he’s in denial about it. He’s been in denial for so long, I think it has actually changed his perceptions of the world. He self-medicates with alcohol. These two thing, I believe, are behind his sudden onset of dementia and continuing decline. If he’s still alive in a year, I’ll be surprised. It breaks my heart, because it didn’t have to be this way. All he had to do was talk to one of us, any of us, and we would have gotten him some sort of help. This is why I hate the social stigma some people still perceive - that depression is a character flaw, that people chose to feel that way, that if they’d just try hard enough they’d get better. That perception ruins lives and then takes them.
For the love of whatever you hold sacred, GreenTreeFrog, don’t let that happen to you. My father was a good man - vibrant, intellectual, curious, loving. The shell of his mind that shambles about is a pitiful, bitter reminder of what he once was, and his life didn’t have to end this way.
I told the family. It went… poorly. My mother is capable of many things ranging from insensitive all the way to outright cruel if she senses that something might knock her out of being the center of attention. Their reaction, in fact, was one of the things that made me finally realize that they were a large part of the problem.
With saner people, the issue isn’t telling them that I’m depressed, it’s getting across that they aren’t going to be able to do anything about it. It drives them a little bit loony to be told that the only thing they can do is be patient and not throttle me while I’m asocial and forget everything. Mine comes and goes – it’s always been there, but it gets worse very rapidly under stress – and people get frustrated with me when all their well-meaning efforts to cheer me up do nothing.
That’s with real friends. Often, with people I don’t know particularly well, it’s just easier to spackle over it and ‘pass’ for normal. As an unintended side effect, I’ve become both an excellent actress and ridiculously good at spotting other people who are covering similar things. I try to consider those sorts of skills as good things that come from the bad.
Well… in some countries you don’t need a prescription, if you are in Canada, I know you can buy Scopolamine sea-sickness skin patches over the counter.
As for Mirtazapine… well, its best to keep a positive outlook about it, but I hope it works.
Yes, our lives would be a lot simpler if people all knew depressed == ordinary sadness
I’ve had to act a lot too, it gets me down if I have to explain it’s not because I’m having a bad day, every day
The study in your link used intravenous scopolamine, and I suspect even the transdermal study uses doses that aren’t available in OTC skin patches. It will be great if that delivery method is as effective as the IV route seems to be.
I had a “positive outlook” about the first 2 dozen medications I was prescribed—that is, as positive an outlook as is possible in a severely depressed person. Now I just cross my fingers, pop the pills, and hope like hell I don’t end up naked on an on-ramp, chewing on some hobo’s face.