Under the Psychiatric Medication Forum I posted about my current dilemma over taking an antidepressant.

Normally I would not take an antidepressant medication because of past problems of cycling and mania caused by antidepressant meds, all classes SSRI
SNRI,tricyclics,MAOI's, ect.

It took me, my PDOC and a consultation from a well known bipolar PDOC at John Hopkins to figure out antidepressants make cycling worse for me and tend to push me into a mixed or manic state.

I wanted to ask the question to my fellow members with bipolar disorder if they have had problems with antidepressant medication. That is with increased cycling or mixed/hypomanic/manic states.

With the death of my son,along with the grief an episode of depression I was already experiencing has become much worse.

On the other forum I listed all the non-antidepressant meds, but with antidepressant effects, I have already taken in the past. These meds did not work or had side effects severe enough that I had to stop.

Lamictal,Lithium,Depakote,Abilify,Zyprexa,Geodon,Memantine,Requip,Rilutek,
Trileptal, 50 ECT treatments. Most recently 11 Ketamine infusions which took the depression away in hours, but I ran out of money to do more to sustain the affect. There are others but I can't think of them right now.

Well today with concern from my PDOC I start Effexor. I am currently on 400 mg of Seroquel, and tegretol. We are hoping the Seroquel and tegretol will protect me from rapid cycling and a switch into mania.

I need to be able to get out to see the grief counselor. At this point I am so depressed I can barely move and even with a mega dose of Ativan daily the idea of walking out the front door sends me into extreme panic.

Again I was just wonder how other people with bipolar have handled SSRI's or SNIR's. If you have had issues with rapid cycling or Mania on them was there something you took to counter act these problems ??