Quoth incognitocook
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Cook: the pharmaceutical library of antidepressants is huge and growing.
Panacea and trailerparkmedic can correct me on this if I misspeak, but here's my understanding:
The brain is protected by a filter called the 'Circle of Willis'. Therefore, the blood supply (and neurochemistry) in the brain is isolated from the rest of the body. The only way we currently have of taking a 'blood sample' or a neurochemistry sample on the brain side of the Circle of Willis would be to drill a hole in the skull.
That is too damn dangerous, so we don't do that.
This means that finding out WHICH antidepressant is going to fix your biochemistry is a process of trial and error.
Your doctor will (or should) listen to you, ask pertinent questions, then decide to try you first on an SSRI. Or a tricyclic. Or one of the other families of antidepressant.
You spend three to six weeks building up enough of a stock of the thing in your brain to get things going properly.
You go back to your doctor and say 'this is helping a little bit' or 'this is helping a lot' or 'this is helping but now I sunburn really easily' or 'this isn't helping at all' or whatever is appropriate.
The doctor goes 'hrm. SSRIs work, but this one gives her side effect X. So let's try this other SSRI'. Or 'SSRIs don't work, so let's try tricyclics'. Or 'okay, this seems to help, let's up the dosage'. Or whatever.
If it's a dosage change, you should start to see an effect within a week or two. Otherwise you need to come off the old drug and onto the new.
Then back to the doctor...
... and so on.
BUT!!!
I am no longer at MINUS LOTS. I've been through that process, and now I hover just below zero. Sometimes I've even hit the low positives.
I still do have days when I'm at MINUS QUITE A BIT. But not the same degree of minus as I have when I'm unmedicated.
Once you and your doctor find a right drug for YOUR particular type of depression, you can go up towards the zero point. You might even exceed it.
Now... you will also need the mental physiotherapy. Your brain quite literally has neural pathways in it that go to depression. It's like you have roads in your brain, and all roads lead to Rome. Er, to depression.
Your mental physiotherapist's job is going to be to help you make new roads.
But Anna (my schizoaffective best friend) found that until she was medicated to nearly-right, mental physiotherapy didn't help her. She literally couldn't learn it.
In both Anna's and my experience; there are things that can be done.
For your husband's sake, consider our experience, and give the medical community a try.
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