What The Heck Is Treatment Resistant Depression?
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.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
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December 9th, 2009 at 7:41 am
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