Depressed and Coping: Treating Depression When Medication Fails

depression

Brain wave CDs that address Delta waves for relaxation and sleep, Alpha, Beta, Theta, and combinations of these waves for such things as alertness, creativity, and concentration have been used in over 36 countries as an alternative to prescription drug treatments for depression with documented success. Meditation and breathing instruction, therapeutic yoga classes and weight training for me, since the age of 59, have helped my former physical complaints and conditions to substantially become minimal or disappear. I will be 66 this summer, and look forward to new varieties of physical activities and experimentation with a diet of largely pure foods. I found a chemical-free regimen of personal and household products that helped put my lifelong allover body psoriasis into remission. A conscious resolve to help another person, and to explore new things every day bring forth a wellspring of energy and optimism.

Thumbs Up

I suffer from a bipolar disorder and I refused to take anti depressants and I am doing GREAT;Those antidepressants are a waste of money;Lithium is enough to treat BP

integrative therapy

I am psychiatrist from Belgrade-Serbia and I treat depression 20 years. I have been in USA on professional education and some kind of specialization in work related stress (Iowa University). I am doing a cognitive-behavior terapy with my patients and also, I support the integrative approach to the patient and apply it to my doctor's practice

Sometimes it is very important to teech patient how to talk with others, how to say no, how to accept reality, how to make healthy food,doing exercise, making plans for future....

We all need to learn how to love ourself and how to tolerate other defects-how to love them with negative characteristics and imperfect.

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use integrative approach

I was very impressed reading the information about different avenues to fight depression. As many of us know, depression is not only state of mind. Every organ has its own "depression.” This is the whole body illness of depression. From my personal experience in working with depressed seniors, the treatment of depression must include an ongoing, 24-7, homework-based combined approach. This means that every possible route must be employed: take medications and vitamins regularly, use techniques to fight stress and arrest negative thoughts, open senses and do physical exercises, improve blood circulation in the brain, and change eating habits. Doing everything together helps the depressed person to keep depression at bay and to regain control over life. We need more articles like this!

Valentin Bragin M.D.

www.conquerdepressiontoday.com

WANT TO BE DRUG FREE

I think I have suffered depression pretty much my whole life beginning in High School when I was comtemplating suicide. At that time in the 70s the psychiatrist wasn't any help at all. Now in retrospect, he didn't prescribe anything or suggest anything which i think is pretty weird.

i have been taking ativan during my mother's onset of cancer. That is when I realized that i had full blown depression and to this day i am semi-functiional. The docs said to me that ativan is not for chronic depression and only for short term acute depression.

i see someone who prescribes meds to be but to be honest, i would prefer to be drug free. i have gained a significant amount of wt due to the anti-depressants. the health provider said to me "Do u want to be depressed or to have extra wt on u?" Actually i want neither but i guess if i had to choose i would want to be depression free.

depression is the worse feeling in the world. u see things not through rose colored glasses but through dark sun glasses all year round. everything is dark and cynical. even good moments is a passing thing and is a temp feeling of elation.

it is true, there are times when i get dressed with the intention of doing something and then i can't do it. i would unlock my door and get ready to venture out but my mind and body is not connected. i can't get out sometimes. something holds me back as if i have invisible shackled chained to the house. those of u who know and experienced this will understand what i am talking about. i then get undressed, take off my makeup and go back and wear my pjs and just stay in and my trip to the outside world is prolonged and stagnant.

i exercise and no matter what i do and how little i eat the wt does not go down. so i feel like a stuffed sausage and a depressed one at that.

i want to feel joy, happiness, inner peace within myself physically, mentally and spiritually. i want to feel good about myself, in my own skin.

i wish i could just not take my meds but then i have to suffer the consequences of feeling suicidal or withdrawal or back to being in deep depression again. there aren't many choices really but i wish there was something that is homeopathic or alternative means to rid a person of their depression.

i wish u all luck who is suffering with depression because it is a disease.....

working toward change...

I have taken anti-depression meds for the past 25 plus years and never really felt "right" They kept me going and I can't fault them but....I want it to be better, different and I'm trying new options with suplements and vitamins and starting soon with a doctor on bio-identical hormone. I've also been trying something called Alpha-stym....I'm also doing yoga and trying to walk on a regular basis...Things are good-sometimes- and not so good other times but I really believe that there has to be a better, healther, more natural approach and I'm working toward finding the answers...

I think the pills were an easy opt-out for the doctor, and then 25 plus years later...I'm still taking them and things are just....ok....

There has got to be a better way...I want a real life not a medicated half assed life....

drugs for depression

I thought this article was flawed in a number of ways.

The research was very selective and ignored many other studies.

STAR *D was already dealing with treatment resistant depressions, no wonder antidepressants were ineffective.

A light box is nothing new. It has been used to treat Seasonal

Affective Disorder and there is a large body of literature to prove it.

How are people who can't leave their apartment to get medication refilled suppose to exercise?

Furthermore it is not true that cognitive therapy is equal to antidepressants with severe depression.

This article uses homeo-pathic practices and disdains medication which is the cornerstone of treatment for the mental

Illness.

There are many more variables for antidepressants not working. For example many general practitioners fail to

push the dose up until remission of symptoms comes.

I have had bi-polar 2 disorder for twenty four years.

I exercise and it is beneficial in moderate depression but not

Severe depression.

ECT electro-convulsive therapy is the most effective treatment for major depression. I believe if I wasn't on medications, I would either be in a state hospital or dead from suicide.

Why do certain people knock antidepressants? It is often because they have a vested interest in their perspective.

It is how they make a living.

All depression is not clinical and is not biological.

Spiritual depression and depression reactive to loss were

not covered. I think the article carried a bias against medications.

Thanks Steve Bloem

Steve Bloem

going to the gym then to wendys for a fish sandwich

if i do that and get a light box...i should be ok...

thirty years of depression, fixed in one article...

sweet.

Spinning the data 2

Let's try this again. Link:

http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/

Use search term: STAR*D

Spinning the data

"And 5 percent of study participants, according to new Star*D data published last week, actually had a worsening of their symptoms while on an antidepressant."

Why did STAR*D researchers wait three years to publish this data? And why is Symbyax (made by Eli Lilly) in particular mentioned here?

This 2008 publication, which features two STAR*D researchers, focuses on pharmacological treatment:

http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/vgn/images/portal/cit_56417/34/57/46875707STAR.pdf