How Long Do Your Depressive Episodes Last?

I'm curious how long depressive episodes last for others. Do they last several months? I have Bipolar 1 and rarely get depressed. I have more manic episodes than depressive ones, but I've been depressed now for four months. I've gone into inpatient twice. I'm taking Wellbutrin and feel better now, I can get out of bed and shower, but I still feel depressed. I'm so tired of it and want it to end. I want to feel "normal" again

Welcome! I note that you're fairly new.

As I've grown older, my depressive episodes outnumber my hypo & manic episodes...mixed is another story. The depressive episodes can last for months at a time & are often as debilitating as the one you describe. The good news, however, is that they pass eventually (we have "two poles," after all!). I'm sorry you had to go inpatient to deal with it; that's rough. Please hang in there & keep us posted.

My last one lasted well over a year and only "ended" (or rather, is finally in the process of ending) because I had ECT. This was the longest and most severe depression I ever had, though. It wasn't pure depression all the way through, mixed features were present a large part of the time.

It has depended. Like you, I have been more prone to mood elevations (mania or just up to hypomania), but very often they turned mixed. When mixed, they don't seem as "sad" or "depressed" as they do "desperate" and "frustrated", with extreme agitation, often anxiety, and some typical manic symptoms (impulsivity, disinhibition, etc.) I think as far as significant pure depressions, I can count them on one hand.

I've had funks that lasted just a few days to a week. My bona fide depressions were at least a couple/few weeks, with a few lasting months. In the latter cases, I was in the hospital (ECT) or at home on disability. Again, there were many more mixed states, with various levels of severity and length. My absolute worst episodes, with psychosis, were manic episodes with mixed features. I also had some mixed that leaned more on the depressive end. I like how the DSM-5 included these specifiers. It fit my situations well.

I could have posted what Soupe did, only about myself. The only thing I will add is that I feel slightly depressed all of the time. But even that can be a mixed state - also, I've had mild depression and severe anxiety since I was a young child. Unfortunately, that probably is in part due to some childhood environmental problems.

Then too, I've been on meds for so long that episodes are no longer entirely clear to me, in general.

@AutumnW0lf:

Welcome aboard! I see you are new. Jump in, the water is warm!

I've just come out of a mild twenty-month-long depression. Happy to be feeling healthy again!

I feel compelled to add something. In addition to the ones after 30 years old, I also had a two/three month depression at 15 years old. My first ever. Also a few month one in college, and a month long one when living in Taiwan, at 24. All significant. The first made me almost fail the year at school, because of hooky to stay in bed, depressed. The one at college did damage to my GPA because of skipping classes and lack of study (in bed). In Taiwan, I was taken to the hospital by my employer after skipping too much work, and failing to call out (in bed). I didn't go inpatient. Soon after, I quit the job when switching to mania. The hospital doctor prescribed antidepressant(s). Most all my pure depressions involved a paralysis, of sorts. Not the case for mixed episodes.

Though I didn't forget the above, when I was very young such depressions became minimized in my brain. [Sort of kind of not so bad. Put behind me.] This changed after my mid 30s. And yet, earlier today I totally neglected to mention these early ones. Strange! And really, even my worst episodes of my 30s almost seem like a dream.

Truth is, what I perceived as a youthful Teflon coating, wasn't as nonstick as I thought. After 30, the coating was even less there. In a recent thread here, I stated that I wished I had the fearlessness and capabilities of my 20s. But really, there was something unhealthy about that decade's tendencies.

@Soupe du jour and all:

Yeah, i had much more active episodes in my twenties and thirties. I had a lot of fun but suffered a lot of shame after too so on the whole i am glad that time has passed. Like you said, there was something unhealthy about that behavior.

I still get high mood and want to take on the world but oddly enough, it's my weight that slows me down. So another plus of being fat.

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak!

Welcome! So Sorry that you're struggling! i Hope things will improve soon for you. i don't have much to add since i don't have bipolar myself so i'll let the others speak as they're already wisely and wonderfully doing. Please do not give up. i Hope you're already seeing a therapist. Do try your Best. Sending many Safe, warm hugs to ALL of you, @AutumnW0lf, your Families, your Friends and ALL of your Loved Ones! Keep fighting and keep rocking NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, OK?!

Thank you all for your replies! I would give each of you a hug on your post if I could, but for some reason it's not letting me

This has changed alot for me over time. So I'm not sure if I ever really had bipolar but the diagnosis of "other bipolar" was suggested to me earlier. And the changes happened without medication so I'm even less sure if it was bipolar. But...I did have mixed episodes a lot. So it is why I had that "other bipolar" diag. I no longer have the episodes. I no longer have acute depression episodes or crises either! I called the mixed episodes crises too. I just have a baseline of "low" now that I had before the first manic/mixed episode anyway. Working on that. But to answer the question, the acute episodes would last half a day or a day. Very acute ones. I had an extreme depression episode once (called double depression I think) for 3 weeks but that was due to a bad event. The mixed episodes would be anywhere from 1-2 days to 2 weeks (incl start and finish). And the "low" baseline I've had for nearly 20 years

I’m sorry to have to say that yes I’ve had depression last more than a year. I was very isolated I stopped seeing friends answering the phone and emails. So there was no one around to notice and get me help. It finally turned mixed and then I voluntarily looked for help because mixed is hell. My depressions when younger were more active and no sleeping unfortunately they gave me AD for them which turned into hell. As I’ve aged my depression is just one long apathetic episode where I retreat. But these long depressions were untreated. My poor cat went a long time without wet food cause I couldn’t get to the store more than once every two months and I just dumped bowls of dry food in a couple rooms. His toilet was neglected too but trooper he is he never went else where. I didn’t care if I ate or not. But he has long since forgiven me.

My very first depressive episode lasted for around 3 months. After that, 1-3 months every year. This 2020-2021 so far, I've experienced it around 6 times from 3 weeks - 2 months. I guess that's called rapid cycling? Because of the pandemic, I've become quite unstable.

My longest depression was before any sort of treatment and it was maybe a year and a half. Since starting treatment they're up to a month or two though I do have depressive "blips" that are just a couple hours or a couple days that I wouldn't call episodes. I'm sorry you've been having such a rough go of it lately; I hope the depression lifts soon. How long have you been on the wellbutrin? It might take some time to get to a point it's fully working.

Thank you, Sapien. I've been on Wellbutrin for a month now. My pdoc raised the dose from 150mg to 300mg two weeks ago, so like you said it probably hasn't had enough time to fully work.

My norm is slightly depressed. The big depression hits after a manic episode and can last months.

I don't want to squash your hopes, but I've been depressed since 2017.

Everyone is different though.

I feel like I've been depressed for many months and it's only getting worse. I'm wondering how much Lamictal has to do with my depression. Sure, it stabilizes mania - but at what cost? I have no motivation, my creative spirit is all but extinguished. I just feel depressed all the time. And terribly anxious.

I'm really sorry to hear this, Beth. As far as Lamictal goes, it's the other way around. It's supposed to prevent depression, but it does nothing (as far as is known) for mania. But it's also mostly a preventative med, so once you have acute depressive symptoms, it's typically too late for Lamictal to help much with that (at least that's what the guidelines say, and it's my experience as well). Are you taking any meds that are helpful with acute depression? Have you spoken to your Pdoc about a possible med change? I really hope there's something that can be done to make this better for you.

I think you just saw my other post lol, and I was looking for your post here.

So my opinion on this is that yes, I think Lamictal killed that part of thinking for me, kinda manic, but also kinda creative and I felt motivation, except it was all going in the wrong place (because, it's called mania for a reason).

That's from my limited experience with Lamictal (Lamotrigine). But I also found that it gave me a feeling of content, which I really liked. So I don't know, because that definitely was acting against the dysphoria in depression. (But I'm not a person for whom creativity is that important, I'm happy with content, anything else can come after that.)

Of course we all have individual reactions to various medications, so I think only you can know from your own observations how it's affected you. Just make sure your psychiatrist is willing to hear about your observations. My personal opinion.

I'm sorry that you didn't find something yet that would work for your anxiety and depression. I hope you'll get to figure that out.

What I didn't try but maybe I should've was Lamictal + Wellbutrin together plus Xanax as needed. Funnily enough, I found Valium too strong. It made me euphoric and gave me a "dopamine high" by killing the anxiety too effectively maybe lol. That would be cool except I needed to sleep instead of a high, so I had to scrap Valium.

Maybe for you too, it would be good to find something that targets your variant of depression besides stabilising the mood/thinking, plus an anti-anxiety medication effectively targetting your anxiety, but that advice is probably too trivial, sorry. But if you didn't have a psychiatrist yet who's willing to be open-minded and really try more things, then it's worth having a go at it.