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Old Oct 20, 2014, 08:13 PM
LastQuestion LastQuestion is offline
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Member Since: Jun 2014
Location: Memphis
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I think it would be beneficial to talk to her about the specifics of why she wants you to stay on lithium and all those other mood stabilizers. I would specifically inquire as to what clinical experience leads her to believe continuation might help more than harm (the psychological stress from the side effects is certainly not helping recovery).

Personally I would not consent to stacking multiple mood stabilizers on top of each other as the pharmacology of them even as monotherapy is still far from comprehensively understood. Medications can make recovery from depression harder depending on how someone responds to them (which varies between indivduals), things turn more and more into an imprecise guessing game when stacking medications on top of each other (to be clear this is largely my opinion based upon personal experience as a patient and some inference using a basic understanding of neuropharmacology). If she ends up shrugging her shoulders with a maybe use your own judgement.

I'd advise getting some bloodwork done to check vitamins and minerals as deficiencies can lead to treatment resistant depression. If bloodwork hasn't already been suggested by your pdoc I would, well, I'd be angry just hearing about that kind of negligence (again, my opinion).

I'm honestly just tired of the way many doctors treat patients at this point. I had a discussion with someone I hadn't seen in over a year today regarding their own treatment which was particularly disturbing, so I'm in a bit of a foul mood on the topic right now. Still, be careful, talk to your treatment team, and don't do anything rash.
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