Depression Talk

Although antidepressants are generally known for their tranquilizing effect, occassionally this effect backfires and the person becomes manic instead. This also can happen to people on heavy tranqilizers like Valium. I’ve even known someone who got manic smoking marijuana for the first time. Just because antidepressants happen a certain way for some people doesn’t mean it will happen that way for you.

What Is Mania

A bipolar depressive on YouTube nicknamed “Guy Interrupted” described mania as “Bugs Bunny on speed.” That’s a fairy accurrate description. Althugh I’ve never experienced mania, I have been stuck inside of rooms with someone going through a manic phase. At least the experience wasn’t boring.

The many syptoms of antidepressant induced mania include:

• Talkingreallyfast
• Racing thoughts
• Not needing to sleep
• Giving away money or posessions
• Overspending
• Full of grandiose plans
• Hearing voices
• Constantly beginning projects but not finishing them

There was this one woman I briefly knew who went book shoppping while manic. She intended to go buy one book, which happened to be published by Penguin. It had a little penguin on the spine. Instead of buying one book, she bought about thirty, because she didn’t want the one penguin to be lonely.

So, you can see there’s sort of a logic system going on but it’s not necessarily a good thing (except for Penguin publishers and booksellers).

Should You Stop the Meds Abruptly?

If your loved one taking a new antidepressant gets manic — or if you realize ou are getting manic — then you need to contact your doctor or therapist right away. In some instances, stopping the meds all of a sudden may bring on painful withdrawal symptoms. Or your doctor might suggest just reducing the dose.

Hope this helps.

Many types of depression runs in families, including major depression and bipolar disorder. The odds are that sooner or later, you’re going to bump into a family member or other loved one who is depressed. The best thing you can do is get the person to talk about how they feel and encourage them to get help.

But there are also other things you want to avoid doing. This list was inspired by The Family Intervention Guide to Mental Illness: Recognizing Symptoms and Getting Treatment by Bodie Morey & Kim. T. Muesser, Ph. D.

Thinking It Will Pass

Depression doesn’t go away on it’s own, so don’t worry that you are making a fuss over nothing. Who knows? If a person has untreated depression when they die, they could turn into a ghost with depression. Perhspas that’s why ghosts do all of that wailing and moaning.

Telling the Person to Snap Out of It

A person with any type of depression CAN’T “snap out of it”. That’s like telling a cancer patient to “snap out of it”. The only thing you will accomplish is making the loved one with depression hate your guts. And then, when the situation gets so desperate that you do need to have a serious heart-to-heart with your depressed loved one, they will refuse to listen to you.

Believing That Mental Illness Doesn’t Happen In Your Family

Mental illness is not a character flaw, a judement from God or a curse of any kind. It’s an illness — which is why it has that word “illness” in the phrase “mental illness”. You’d want your loved one to get treatment for cancer, so why not mental illness?

I had easier access to prescription drugs when I was homeless in England than now, when I’m homed and self-employed in America. Part of this ease was because of the NHS, but mostly it was because I was in the right place to get drugs (the street), if I so wanted them. In order to get money (for whatever reasons), some homeless were desperate enough to sell their prescriptions.

Funny thing is, I never asked anyone for Valium (diazepam). Some trauma would happen to me (such as when my home was burnt down) and a couple of days later, someone would slip a pill into my hands and say, “Christ’s sakes, get some sleep, will ya?” (which is a compliment.)

Nasty Stuff

I do not get along with Valium. If you’ve ever taken an overdose of Nyquil, then you know what being on Valium is like. You have an absolutely miserable 24 hours because you are so drowsy — and yet you can’t get to sleep. You’re constantly just about to fall asleep and then some noise wakes you right up again. You may also suddenly loose control of your bowels.

It was only a couple of days after takng the Valium that I could get eventually any sleep. I’m not sure if it was due to the Valium or my body giving out.

Valium and Antidepressants

In April of 2003, I started Prozac. I was still homeless in England at this time. Every now and then, someone would slip me a Valium. Mostly, I’d slip it back, but did get curious enough abut it to ask the day care centre’s doctor about any possible interactions between Prozac and Valium.

“Wow. Don’t take Valium. It can make you even more depressed than you already are. Smoke a joint if you have to to get some sleep but don’t take Valium.”

And so I haven’t and I am sharing the news with you. Hope this helps.

The good news in this film is that reasearch on depression is being done. The bad news is that they are ticking off a lot of lab mice in order to carry out these experiments.

There’s very few creatures more depressed than a labratory mouse. Even Richard Lewis would seem bubbly compared to a lab mouse. What they go through if similar to what humans go through in that we learn to give up hope and quietly wait for death.

But how do you scientifically know when a mouse is depressed? Apparently, when they stop swimming in a pool of milk with smooth sides they are unable to climb out of. The more depressed the mouse, the sooner they stop swimming.

Scientists have given antidepressants to mice to see how long they’ll keep swimming. The mice did indeed swim longer. Then, they gave the mice behaviorial therapy, giveing out rewards when the mouse heard a certain clicking noise. Mice with both antidepressants and behavorial training swum even longer than the mice that were just on antidepressants.

Also, when the mouse brains were examined (the video never quite explains how this is done) they showed that new brain cells and neuiral pathways grew in those mice that had both antidepressants and behaviorial therapy.

Which I guess means that those of us who suffer from depression still nedd to keep taking the meds, but also need to go get a bathing suit because we’ll all soon be swimming in milk until we give up. I’m not sure if any researcher will be around to pull us out by our tails, though.

I’ve taken LSD once — but not by choice. My boyfriend at the time did the “open your mouth and close your eyes and you will get a big surprize” thing and boy, was it EVER a surprize! So, if you happen to be at a party or your significant other suddenly turns into a skeleton with a smile, don’t panic — it’s just LSD (also known as acid, Bartman, blotter paper, window pane). It will pass.

Nothing Can Hurt You

The first thing you have to realize that with LSD, you will see things. You may hear things, too or even smell things, just like an hallucination. But it’s like television — it seems like it’s right there with you, but it’s not.

So, get to a safe place, sit back and enjoy the show. Depending on the quality of the LSD and your general health, effects can last a few hours or a couple of days. There will be plenty of time later to inflict revenge on the person who spiked you.

What You See

Everyone’s LSD trips are different, so I’ll describe some of the things I saw. Everyone’s faces had lots of colorful squiggles on them and various flaces flashed over the face. The one that kept popping up on my boyfreind’s face was a vampire.

The great thing was the flashes. I could write in the air as if my finger was a pen. That was highly amusing.

I also saw a small grey, black and white wolf sitting in the corner of the room. However, he just sat there and watched and soon he was no big deal.

I also felt that my body had extended far beyond the borders of my skin. I could reach my hand out perhaps six inches from the wall — and feel the wall. Again, that was highly amusing, but it made going to the toilet a challenge worthy of climbing Mt. Everest.

The Come Down

Most of the visual hallucinations went away in about twelve hours and the feeling of beeing “trippy” (goofy yet calm) lasted for three days. And when I came back down to earth, I discovered my boyfriend had robbed me of nearly $1000.

So, I don’t recommend taking LSD, but you do get to see some pretty lights.

In doing this blog and the migraine blog, I read a lot of information about different types of depression (and often people with migraines have depression). Right now, I’m reading The Family Intervention Guide to Mental Illness: Recognizing Symptoms and Getting Treatment by Bodie Morey and Kim T. Mueser, PhD. The book deals not only with various types of depression and mood disorders, but also fun things like schizophrenia, dementia and obessive compulsive disorder.

In reading all of the symptoms, I can’t help but see myself having every single one of these conditions.

This Is Normal

Actually, it’s a normal reaction to read about an illness and then suddenly think you have it. It’s not just hypochondria (which is also mentioned in the book, come to think of it.) Haven’t you ever read a magazine artile or saw a news show about a newly discovered disease and then start feeling the very same early symptoms of the disease? I can’t hear anything about arthritis without my back giving a twinge, for example. And I can’t hear anythign about diabetes without thinking “Mmmmm — sugar..” (OK, maybe that was a bad example.)

However, most people get over this sensation in a few days. They run around like a maniac in order to take care of their lives and in the process, the memory of the upsetting disease we think we may be getting goes further and further from our minds.

Time Frame

And I think that’s why we are suddenly convinced that we have the condition we were just learning about. It was takng up our full attention. But if a couple of weeks go by and you still think something’s wrong, it couldn’t hurt to go see a doctor.

Hope this helps.

You can have panic attacks for many reasons — not just because you’ve been diagnosed with phobias, panic attack disorder or general anxiety disorder. For example, my migranes can trigger a panic attack. Panic attacks can be the sign of another illness that needs attention. And, of course, suffering a severe trauma like a car accident, mugging or finding your spouse in bed with your best friend can also trigger a panic attack.

Many people with depression do experience panic attacks or know someone who is afflicted with panic attacks. Although panic attacks suck, it can be even more terrifiying to watch someone else go through a panic attack rather than experience it yourself.

When I feel a panic attack coming on, I ask someone I know well to talk to me about anything. It helps distracts me from the whirling thoughts. I sometimes also put on a calming video or DVD to sort of self-hypnotise me back to tranquility (or my usual acidic version of normalcy.)

But my panic attacks are mild in comparison with other people’s. So it’s great that Expert Village did a little video series dealing with panic attacks in a practical ways. I found that the best in the series was “How to Help Someone Having a Panic Attack,” because it explains the difference between helpful eye contact and leering. It also explains when touching is appropriate.

I just want to add that you may also want to help the person breathe deeply and gently remind them that nothing bad is happening to them right now and that you know it’s not their fault that they get panic attacks.

This is a dreadfully named type of chronic depression. Please, someone in the medical community rename this thing. When you’re depressed, you’re always convinced that you cannot be cured or helped. With a name like “treatment resistant depression”, that sort of kills off all desire to continue getting help.

Anyway, when you have this type of depression, the usual antidepressants do not work. According to the Mayo Clinic, a patient needs to have tried at least three different medications before they can be diagnosed with treatment resistant depression.

Things To Keep In Mind

A person’s circumstances could give them treatment resistant depression. For example, you will find a lot of treatment resistant depression in the homeless. The stress of trying to survive pretty much cancels out a lot of antidepressant effects. Other circumstances that could lead to this type of depression include grief, war and physical or mental abuse.

Unless these underlying issues are addressed, then all of the drugs won’t help the depression, although they may help the person get a few hours of sleep.

Other Therapies to Try

If you continue on trying to get help for treatment resistant depression, that’s a good sign that you will find some help. You can have this treated by a doctor or psychiatrist. They may recommend some or a combination of the following:

• New types of medications like anti-seizure meds
• Combining antidepressants with other drugs
• Talk therapy or cognitive behavior therapy
• Getting a new therapist, doctor or psychiatrist
• Shock therpay (usually reserved for sucidal cases)
• Deep brian stimulation
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation

Don’t give up.

Bestselling author Dr. Andrew Weil claims that for overall health, you shouldn’t watch the news on TV except for local news, because it’s too depressing. According to a Pittsburgh University study on teens, they back up Dr. Weil’s claims, but add that watching any TV may contribute to developing depression.

Study Specs

The study followed 4,140 teenagers and looked at how long they watched TV, played computer games, listened to the radio and if they were eventually diagnosed with depression. The study started with interviews in 1995 and again in 2002, when the teens were in their 30’s. All of the teens participlating in 1995 were not diagnosed with depression. Years later, 7.8% were.

The study highlighted that it was the TV watching group that were later diagnosed with depression, not the radio-listening group or the computer-games playing group. The other groups still watched TV, but about a half hour less each day than the TV watching group, who watched TV an average of 2.3 hours per day.

The Practical Upshot

The study acknowledges that there could be many other factors why 7.8% of the teens became depressed. One of those could be that the kids did not get enough sleep because they were watching TV instead. Not getting enough sleep can get anyone depressed. That’s why sleep deprivation is considered torture in some countries.

But you can stop TV watching a couple of hours before bed or watch rather goofy, fluffy entertainment like late-night talk shows instead of action movies. Sometimes, watching a really boring documentary can help you drift right off.

You can’t isolate yourself from what’s going on in the world. Also, when you have depression, ANYTHING can set you off. It doesn’t have to be TV. Watch TV, even if you are depressed.

The BRODEAN study has begun at UT Southwestern Medical Center. A first volunteer has been given an implant hoped to help lessen or cure major depression. BRODEAN is short for BROdmann Area 25 DEep brain Neuromodulation. Impressive. What does that Mean? It means people are volunteering for surgery to implant this tiny device that promotes deep brain stimulation (DBS).

See what major depression does to you? You get so desperate that you’ll volunteer for anything in order to get relief.

Not Exactly Brain Surgery

What makes BRODEAN different from other types of brain surgeries? Instead of trying to bore a hole in your skull to stick in an electrode, and then connecting you to a seperate machine, everything you need is stuck inside of you. It’s sort of like a pacemaker for the brain (at least, that’s what Time says). This is how UT Southwestern’s Tony Whitworth, M.D. describes it:

The Libra DBS system’s generator or ‘battery’ is implanted near the collarbone and connected to small electrical leads placed at specific targets in the brain. The implantation surgery takes about two to three hours. Patients typically are able to go home one or two days after the procedure

With everything in place, the Libra DBS system generator delivers mild elecrical current to a particular area of the brain that gets quite active in major depressives called Broadmann Area 25.

No, I don’t get it, either.

Originally For Parkinson’s Disease

DBS first appeared on the medical scene in the late 1980’s as a treatment for Parkinson’s Disease. IT’s also being used as therapy for other neurological disorders that often involve trembling as well as trying to help rehabilitate drug addicts.

Very nice — but stay away from my head. After years of reading Stephen King, I just see too many ways this could go haywire…so to speak.

As we head into that time of discount sales on red edible underwear and bubblebath that comes in a champagne bottle, let us depressives remember one very important fact about romantic love:

It Sucks

If you have been diagnosed with depression, or even if you haven’t been diagnosed with depression, don’t make the mistake of thinking, “If I just find my soulmate, everything will be all right.” If you believe that, you are setting yourself up for a major heartache.

Let’s look at the problems in looking for a soulmate.

There Is No Such Thing As A Soulmate

The concept of a soulmate is that each couple makes up one half of a soul and that by only finding that special someone (usually around Valentine’s Day) you will feel complete and happy or at least able to cope with misery.

Bull cookies.

If you believe that people have souls, then why do you believe they’ve spilt in half? If you don’t beleive people have souls, why look for someone to make you complete?

You are putting all of the eggs of your happiness into the basket case that is your romantic partner or longed-for future romantic partner. By thinking that you need a soulmate, you have closed off all of the other avenues of life that can bring you happiness and good mental health.

In order to survive through life, you need to be flexible enough to adapt. A vast multitude of people can serve as your romantic partners and provide all of your needs in exactly the same way. Don’t expect them to make you happy — and don’t let them make you miserable.

True Love

If you want true love, adopt a pet from your local animal shelter. If you’re lucky enough to have a supportive family, send them Valentines and thank them.

Hope this helps.

Sometimes, these studies make me scratch my head. We know that high cholesterol can kill you, whether you have depression or not. Now, new research published in the Journal of Psychiatric Reasearchhas come out stating that in men diagnosed with drepression, low cholesterol can kill you, too.

According to this, the way the combination of low cholesterol and depression kills men is by making them commit suicide or taking a drug overdose or engaging in more risky behaviors that may lead to a premature death.

Damned if you pig out and damned if you don’t, huh?

What Is Low Cholesterol?

The article defined low cholesterol in men as “165 milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter or less”. The normal number is 200 milligrams of cholesterol per decileter.

When it comes to cholesterol, there is such a thing as getting the level too low. Low cholesterol is thought to perhaps play a role in making a person more predisposed to cancer. In pregnant women, it can lead to misscarriage or low birth weight.

For most people in North America or the UK, the dangers of getting low cholesterol are a moot point because of the high calorie, high-cholesterol diet. Because of the high price of food, people are choosing to get fatty calorie-laden food to help them get through the day. But, somehow, some folks still have low cholesterol.

Study Specs

The article was researched and written by the Geisinger Health System in Danville, PA. It looked at about 4500 veterans from Vietnam and followed up on what happened to them since 1985, with 2000 as a cut off date to begin coallating data. Veterans with both depression and low cholesterol were found to be seven times more likely to die a premature death than other veterans.

Of course, being a veteran may have had something to do with the high suicide rate, too, but for some reason, that point was glossed over.

There are different flavors to bipolar disorder or manic depression, although there is a lot of quibbling over just how many types there are. This is because every bipolar patient has their own unique version of the illness. This is true of anyone suffering from any type of depression, but there are some generalities common to each category.

Types of bipolar depression are divided based on how often a patient cycles. A cycle means a period of time when they go through their manic phase, followed by the depressive phase. Manic phases and depressive phases can last weeks or months, depending on the person. There can be long gaps of time between each cycle.

Cyclothymic Disorder

This is considered the mildest type of bipolar disorder, complete with the manic-depressive cycles. It still should be treated, because the risk of suicide is just as bad as in more severe types.

Type I Bipolar Disorder

Also known as “classic bipolar disorder”, this is the kind we usually read about. The cycles are more severe than in Type II.

Type II Bipolar Disorder

The cycles are not as severe as Type I but stronger than in cyclothymia. The person will never become as severely manic as Carrie Fisher or Spike Milligan.

Rapid Cycling

No, not what Lance Armstrong does, but manic depressives who have their cycles practically on top of each other, without the weeks, months or years break in between that many other types exhibit. You have four or more cycles per year.

Mixed Bipolar Disorder

This was a new one for me. In this type of bipolar disorder, you experience mania and depression at the same time. That’s gotta suck.

People with depression can get bad dreams, nightmares and night terrors. There is a misconception that night terrors are really bad nightmares. No — nightmares are nightmares, no matter how bad they are in intensity and frequency.

Night terrors are much worse — well, at least for anyone else in the room. This is where you actually get up and act out your nightmares. I used to have a boyfriend that had night terrors in his twenties. I eventually made him sleep in a seperate bedroom, because I was sick of dodging fists in the wee hours of the morning.

But, I’m not a doctor or therapist. This YouTube clip is a much better explanation of the difference between nightmares and night terrors. This is an explanation from a pediatrician, but night terrors, nightmares and bad dreams can happen at any age.

By the way, “bad dreams” are not as bad as nightmares — more annoying than anything else. Some doctors and therapists do make a distinction between bad dreams and nightmares, which is why I seperate bad dreams into their own category.

If you’ve started a new medication and you’ve never, ever had night terrors in your life and suddenly get them, please contact your doctor. Ditto if you suddenly start sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking is sort of like night terrors, only it’s a heck of a lot more benign. You don’t go around punching people. My family has this storu of me sleepwalking as a kid. All I did was lower all of the blinds or pull the curtains in the house, then I went back to bed. Of course, I don’t know if they’re making this story up or not.

Last night, my Mom suggested that I talk to my doctor about my nightmares. She said that my nightmares weren’t normal.

Oh, Please

Personally, I think nightmares and bad dreams are normal, whether you have depression or not. They’re normal for me, anyway. I have them about four nights a week — sometimes more, sometimes less. My first memory is a nightmare. Hell, I probably had them in the womb.

I think people have more bad dreams and nightmares than they either care to admit or remember. That’s one reason why people drink — in order to forget their dreams. I have an ability to remember my dreams and now, in my advanced years, have learned how to forget a dream really quickly (you just roll over or get up to go to the bathroom).

My dog also helps me forget my nightmares. She does something cute or suddenly farts and then I’m distracted enough to forget the nightmares. Since she also sleeps in the same bed with me, a fart from her is a major distraction.

W-O-M-A-N

Also, in case you couldn’t tell from my name, I’m a woman, which automatically makes me more prone to nightmares. Well, that’s the finding of one UK study back in September of 2008, anyway. This could be due to hormone changes, or having to put up with someone who snores all night. Our ancestors thought that women’s dreams could be significant tellings of the future because they tended to be creepier than men’s. (OK — that’s just a theory of mine).

So, if you suddenly get nightmares and haven’t had them in a long time, it could be that you’re just remembering your dreams better or sleeping better and producing more dreams than before. When in doubt, please talk to your doctor or therapist about bad dreams or nightmares.