Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonely1985
I can't just try something and see how it works, these are chemically addictive substances that can take a month to fully work and even longer to get off of them and many of them can make my condition a lot worse (i.e. antidepressents are bad for bipolar, Lithium is bad for depression, ect) or they could put me in a disassociative state and I risk losing my mania and any happiness or any excitment that I have left. My biggest concern is that every medicine that I have researched lists "increased suicidal thoughts or actions" as a possible side effect...
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I'm sorry to hear that you're not feeling very well.
Frankly, I think you absolutely should try something and see if it works. It's unfortunate that many of the meds can take up to a month to work, but they're the best treatments we have for now and not taking them probably means you'll be depressed for an even longer time. Obviously, a healthy lifestyle is also crucial, but meds are usually necessary for Bipolar.
I'm curious about where you're getting your information from. You called the drugs chemically addictive substances, but that's not true of many of them. Antidepressants can be successfully taken by many Bipolar patients in conjunction with a mood stabilizer; Lithium is not "bad for depression" (it is used to treat unipolar depression), and it isn't a chemically addictive substance; ECT is highly effective for many severely depressed patients, and it won't make you worse -- the belief that it will is outdated.
Increased suicidal ideation is a
possible side-effect of a lot of medications. That doesn't mean they have a high probability of making suicidal ideation worse. For instance, if 2% of patients taking a certain medication and 1% of the controls on placebo experience an increase in suicidal ideation, then there is a demonstrated increase in suicidal ideation. However, the difference is so small that the risk of an increase is outweighed by the potential benefits of the treatment.