Antidepressant drugs help few people

elg5cats wrote:There is more than one type of Bipolar Disorder. Depressive symptoms differ between the types likely resulting in benefits or risks of using antidepressant medications. Maybe the below information can help with clarity and understanding of thoughts presented. Opposing opinions may be correct in this discussion.

Thanks for the breakdown of the different forms of bipolar. I think that will help everyone that's not well versed in this stuff. My mom's dx is bipolar II with psychosis. Since she is so slow-cycling things build up over time.

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BlackSpinner wrote:

Autopapdude wrote:Agree completely with the article. My son is Bipolar II, and conventional antidepressants can cause severe mania in folks who are bipolar, yet doctors prescribe them. Amazing!

But you are not supposed to take antidepressants for bipolar!

My daughter is on antidepressants, talk therapy alone wouldn't have kept her alive and going to school.
Her best friend was also on them and they didn't help because she was bi polar, a regular GP prescribing this stuff often can't tell the difference. She is now on other meds and back at school too.

I, too, had the same opinion as Mary when I read this due to the way that first sentence is worded. I waited to post so I could digest the comments being said.

My mother had mental illness, including being bipolar. She was a rapid cycler and she could and did cycle within hours. We used to dread coming home from school as kids as we never knew what kind of mood she would be in. She was hospitalized numerous times in order to get her meds lined out. She would build up a tolerance and then it was back to square one. On the right combination of meds, she was fine. It was only when they stopped doing what they were supposed to do, trouble would begin. Yes, she was seeing a psych doctor for these, along with counselling to help control the moods.

My sister followed in her footsteps. She has ran nude down the middle of our neighborhood and has had to have police intervention at times to prevent her from hurting herself or someone else. She goes from being really manic and not sleeping for days at a time, to depression so bad that she has had to be hospitalized and on 24 hour watch.

No one had ever discussed how this can run in families. I have first hand experience that it does. Some of my children are affected by it. One has taken lithium for bi-polar and Paxil for depression. She is not as severe as my sister and my mom. We did a combination of psych doctor, counselling and meds for her (she was 15 when diagnosed). So far it has taken as big as toll on her life as it has other family members. My oldest son has it as well. Only after he tried to kill himself, and almost succeeded, did he get a diagnosis. He has a personality disorder as well. Interesting combination. Bless his wife that is a saint that puts up with him and married him anyway. He also has had the counselling, psych doctor, and meds to level out his moods.

In our family, it has taken a combination approach -- anti-depressants, therapy, etc. to help.

So please do not downplay the importance of anti-depressants on SOME bi-polar patients.

But you are not supposed to take antidepressants for bipolar!

BlackSpinner that sounds pretty adamant. I apologized and explained why I responded the way I did. I don't need reading comprehension courses. I need understanding that every person is different. If I was saying my treatment wasn't working your comment may have been appropriate.
I'll leave it alone if you will.

Mary Z.

Mary Z wrote:But you are not supposed to take antidepressants for bipolar!

BlackSpinner that sounds pretty adamant. I apologized and explained why I responded the way I did. I don't need reading comprehension courses. I need understanding that every person is different. If I was saying my treatment wasn't working your comment may have been appropriate.
I'll leave it alone if you will.

Mary Z.

It was an adamant agreement to the comment that was quoted which was not your statement to begin with.

Yes lets leave it alone.

My original comment was the factual one (from psydoc, not me) is that many antidepressants can be dangerous for individuals who are bipolar. Usually, if an antidepressant is given, it is in combination with a mood stabilizer, or antipsychotic, such as Abilify, or Zyprexa. My son was taking Wellbutrin (notorious for inducing mania in some bipolar I and II individuals), and it made his mania worse.

Antidepressants in combination with other drugs can work for Bipolar individuals. Paxil is one that is often recommended, but others can be dangerous. This is not my deduction, but what a psychiatrist told me regarding my son's treatment a year ago.

My original comment was the factual one (from psydoc, not me) is that many antidepressants can be dangerous for individuals who are bipolar.

The biggest problem that I see is that so many people are getting antidepressants from their GP's after a 7 minute consultation with no referral to a therapist or psychiatrist. This is what happened to both my daughter and her best friend and other people I know. I was the one who insisted my daughter get talk therapy after she stabilized. This inspired her friend to get more evaluation then the 7 minute consult and the bi-polar diagnosis and proper treatment.

It drives me nuts all the people I know on these depression meds who have never seen a psydoc and feel that all they need is a hand full of pills to manage their situation. I used to volunteer on a crisis line that had suicide calls - I don't want my friends in that head space.

The biggest problem that I see is that so many people are getting antidepressants from their GP's after a 7 minute consultation with no referral to a therapist or psychiatrist. This is what happened to both my daughter and her best friend and other people I know. I was the one who insisted my daughter get talk therapy after she stabilized. This inspired her friend to get more evaluation then the 7 minute consult and the bi-polar diagnosis and proper treatment.

It drives me nuts all the people I know on these depression meds who have never seen a psydoc and feel that all they need is a hand full of pills to manage their situation. I used to volunteer on a crisis line that had suicide calls - I don't want my friends in that head space.

Exactly. I could not agree more. That is how he ended up on Wellbutrin. His family doctor thought he was "depressed," and recommended an ordinary antidepressant. It was after a 5 minute visit, as it turns out. Later, after having mania, this was modified by a psydoc, who went into intensive therapy and counseling mode with him.

I knew from my mother's experience that when things seemed to be heading south getting into a good mental health clinic that utilizes and has a psych doctor in house is the route to go.

In my daugther's experience, she had just turned 15 when she took an overdose of over the counter meds. At the time our insurance did not cover counselling and covered at 50% for psych visits. I called the list in our local phone book. We are a rural area and so choices were limited. My mother's doctor was in the city and had since passed away. To make a long story short, he was a pill pusher pure and simple. Even though we was an MD and was a psych doctor, he kept increasing the dosage of Paxil she was on. At the time, I believed she had an eating disorder as well. He pooh-poohed the idea. This doctor was charging insurance $200.00 per visit and so we were paying $100.00 out of pocket for the visits. He was having her come in weekly for "therapy" which we were getting charged for. He was claiming he was seeing her for 60 minutes, in actual time he was spending approximately 15 minutes with her, and the rest was "to update the paperwork". I finally threw a fit and he said his wife was a counselor and would start seeing her for an additional 30 minutes per week without any additional charge. By the time she ended up sick in the er and they found out she was on 250 mg of Paxil and was pregnant, it was pretty scary. She had also taken mega doses of antibotics.

So you need to be careful in your selection of doctors to make sure that they know their stuff.