mental illness is awful

Ok sorry I misread that (3 vs 5). I am no chemist but apparently anything that combines the element fluorine with other elements is considered a fluoride, and that includes fluoxetine.

I dont think anyone really knows what ADs are doing to the brain. And there is no objective test to measure a person's neurotransmitter levels reliably, far as I know, nor to measure how ADs are affecting the brain. So if a Dr says they are treating depression with an SSRI or other AD they are more or less lying or at least distorting. I think it's well established that at best ADs simply manage or suppress symptoms.

But sometime back SSRIs or SNRIs used to work for me. How then can depression that's caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain be treated? I have a feeling that depression is due to inadequate nerve signalling in the brain pathways that control depression and neurotransmitters control this nerve signalling.Little turtle can you enlighten me on this? I need your and little turtle and everyone else's help in this ordeal. Right now I am not being able to do anything much at home apart from walking 30mins every day-no housework,minimum self care. But this amount of exercise is not helping much to improve my depression. So help me if you can!

I have a feeling that depression is due to inadequate nerve signalling in the brain pathways that control depression and neurotransmitters control this nerve signalling.Little turtle can you please enlighten me on this?

in my experience, medications haven't really helped me much..

but i guess pretty much all of my problems come from a traumatic history, in this case the psychological turmoil must be tamed and adapted to the new world that i am in..
not a past world that doesnt exist anymore.. but its difficult to just ''snap out of it'' ..
difficult to convince yourself that an orange is an apple, and also when you've convinced yourself that a bunny rabbit is a viper... hard to change the views.. realities..

the mind is powerful.. but anything is possible, so moving forward and recovering and creating a nice life must be possible as well

stay strong..

Hi elevatedsoul,
I can deal with my past trauma. My depression is due to a chemical imbalance in my brain and meds are not being able to correct that imbalance. Dont know why!
Thanks! You are right, I have to stay strong. Maybe I will have a beautiful future life, the one I dream about from time to time now.

this stuff really is awful, sucks so bad :/
but there should always be a slither of hope!

i annoy myself to no end with the hope thing, some part of me in my mind wont let it go so even when i feel miserable and in pain, completely desperate, despair, depressed with no hope.. that little thing keeps chanting, is ok things can be ok there is always hope!
makes me want to smack myself silly sometimes but i guess its a good thing, we have to remind ourselves that there is always a little hope... and its not over until we decide its over, we cant lose until we give up, and we wont give up

keep working with your doctors and try to take notes on things, journaling i think is good so you can write down thoughts.. write down how different meds are making you feel and if they are helping or not... just a little notebook to keep those type notes in so you can keep track of whats happening that way you it can hopefully help you put the puzzle together to be able to conquer this beast !

sometimes it takes longer and sometimes some people can recover quicker, i think it varies for everyone a bit..
i've been trying different things with doctors since 2011, but before then i would just self medicate with other drugs and alcohol
so i wouldn't be surprised if my chemicals arent all out of wack too

also i always have black eyes too >.< dunno why... but i have complex ptsd and alot of nightmares, i dont sleep very well even though it would seem i sleep 5-10 hours a night..?
once they told me that its not so much how long you sleep, but the quality of your sleep.. if the quality of your sleep is not good then it doesnt matter how long you sleep at all

i wish i had answers, im still looking for answers myself.. but just try to be kind to yourself and keep fighting, pushing for the solution..

those mood stabilizers you are on im not sure about, when they put me on the heavier meds i couldnt take it anymore and just stopped taking all of them pretty much... not all at once of course, but i just realized that they werent helping me.. they had diagnosed me with bipolar and was trying to treat the 'chemical imbalance' as well, but i dont have bipolar so it didnt help...

do you have bipolar disorder?
bipolar definitely can end up needing a little chemical help..

check this

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/bi...ixed-features/

I had a psychotic episode after a doctor had prescribed topiramate to me back in 2002-2003. And he had removed my anti-psychotic med. That's the only psychotic episode I had, but then if you have it even once you will be labelled bipolar. Maybe my new doc has prescribed the mood stabilizers coz he is scared of another psychotic episode happening? Do you think lithium 800 per day is a bit too much?
BTW I have black eyes and a tired look on my face when I feel a lack of oxygen in my brain and lungs. I think I have breathing prob around that time too.

But how do we know depression is caused by a chemical imbalance? That hypothesis seems to have been discarded by most experts and industry insiders. The myth apparently lives on because of the strength and tenacity of industry marketing, and maybe because of lazy doctors.

As some experts have pointed out, the reality is that there is no definitive brain chemistry problem that leads to depression, and in fact SSRIs and other drugs actually cause an imbalance. That's how they work.

And if the brain is malfunctioning, dont we need to know why? Is it the presence of toxins, or chronic inflammation, or infectious organisms? If so, drugs do nothing to resolve the cause.

Also, as someone pointed out, depression is not a disease it as an abstract feeling. Seems like there are as many possible causes as there are people.

Has anyone brought up the possibility of a sleep disorder? Or a general breathing problem? People who mouth breathe (I tend to) lose CO2, which in turn means the tissues are not getting enough O2. And they also tend to have sleep apnea. Another possible cause of depression, mood problems, illness, cognitive issues.

The brain maybe malfunctioning coz of the presence of toxins, or chronic inflammation, or infectious organisms or coz of genes that cause a disturbance in nerve signalling in the brain. (say some people have high blood pressure or diabetes,while some people dont coz of their genetic makeup). BTW cant neurologists and/or psychiatrists check nerve signalling in the pathways of the brain that control depression to see if they are ok or not?

I disagree with you on one point - I think that depression is as much a disease as diabetes.

Finally, I have breathing prob for which I feel less energetic all the time. I feel my brain also doesnt get enough oxygen.

Elevatedsoul, how are you doing nowadays? How is your depression? How are your meds working?

Dunno about testing nerve signaling.

If depression is a disease like diabetes and is caused by simple brain imbalance, then shouldn't we expect that doctors could run a lab test or other objective test to check this? Some depression is situational. Some is from trauma or emotional distress. Some is bodily disease like thyroid, mercury toxicity, leaky gut/brain, etc. Or all of the above. But the broken brain theory seems the least valid and least proven.

Re: breathing, could see a biological dentist to have jaw, airways, bite, breathing, etc evaluated. Or a Myofunctional Therapist.

But science is yet not so advanced to accurately test and measure nerve signalling and chemical imbalance inside the brain. That's as far as I know, but then I may be wrong.As for depression arising from situational causes,situational factors may cause chemical imbalances and faulty nerve sigalling inside the brain and result in depression.And to some extent the tendency is supposed to be genetic. Say, two people never react with the same kind of depression to the same stressor.

well i think if you have a manic episode they tag the bipolar thing on there... i dont even know why they dx me as bipolar, i tried to tell them something was amiss with that dx but they never listened.. i stopped seeing him after 4 years and saw a psychologist for an assessment and to really find out if it was bipolar or what in the world was goin on and he agreed with me that it seemed not to be bipolar.. dx me with the severe mdd, adhd, gad, somatization, ptsd, and some type of avpd traits... i've never had a manic episode or psychotic episode before...

i have had a lot of trouble with insomnia though..

i ALWAYS breathe through my nose, sleeping or awake.. i cant stand breathing through my mouth
if i cant breathe through my nose im suffocating

im only taking Wellbutrin right now as im not seeing a psychiatrist ... GP doesnt want to touch me with any other type of meds because i guess the psychologist scared her about my complex issues... just started seeing a therapist again at the old clinic i was going to but the psychiatrist i was seeing retired (THANK GOD!!) and they are waiting on new pdoc to move in...

the wellbutrin, i dont even know .. i guess it helps a little because im not staying in bed and i am eating... before i started taking it back in feb. or when ever i did at the beginning of the year i couldnt do anything... i didnt eat anything for 5 days and decided i had to go see the GP and try to do something... i quit taking all the antipsychotics and moodstabilizers and stuff they had me on last year because they werent helping... i was on 9 different pills at one point... but i have a dissociation problem apparently and medication cant really fix that, probably just made it worse...

i didnt like the lithium because when i started taking it it elevated my TSH and they wanted me to start taking synthroid to fix that and i was just like im not gonna pile on meds like that!! besides, lithium didnt really help me much... i think i was on 400 or 600mg... i think alot of people take around 1000mg? im not 100% sure... 800 i think isnt abnormal.. the main thing is how it works for you and how your body reacts to any medication...
i was on 600mg seroquel, 20mg zyprexa, umm... 500mg depakote i think... perphenazine... uhm.. i cant even remember all the ones they had me on when i went to the hospital i think i should of been a walking dope zombie though.. but i looked normal to everyone else i guess, stuff just doesnt hit me like it supposed to for some reason but medications effect everyone differently i guess... i know the depakote did cause a cognitive impairment and i had trouble counting and saying abcs and remembering words and stuff though, needless to say after i convinced them to let me go home from the hospital i didnt stay on any of the meds for long because i was just sick of the doctors and the meds, they thinking they knew everything that was going on with me and throwing a bunch of drugs at me telling me to cheer up and it will be ok if you just get a life kind of thing...

the brain is highly sophisticated piece of work and they are still working hard to try to understand it.. in science alot of times it seems they adopt these rules and hold them to be true because they dont have any other proofs other wise, even if they arent true they just go by them because its the best model they have - seems like alot of times even when they are proven wrong some even then have trouble letting go of the wrong models

can google search some things about how little we know about the brain and im sure you'll find some interesting things, im fascinated with it but im really in a hazy place and my focus and concentration is suffering... i cant even remember what i wrote at the beginning of the last paragraph

but on the note of my condition, im still fighting!
this is all we can do, have to learn about ourselves and whats causing things to happen inside ourselves... we're all a little different and all react a little differently, have a little different perceptions and i think all the little differences that we as humans have should mean that each treatment plan should be individualized to the one person instead of modeled on a whole and treat everyone the same...

you are your best friend in this treatment, i feel like the doctors are like tools that we have to learn to use and work with, we have to find the right tool for the job... then learn how to work with it so that we can improve the situation or even maybe create a brand new better situation all together
doctors obviously aren't just tools, but its best kind of analogy i can come up with right now in this state of mind

personally i've never liked medications, but i had to try what the doctor wanted me to... but i dont think its a good idea to rely on medications to fix a problem because they aren't 100% sure how most of these medications work still it seems - since they dont completely undrestand the brain they cant completely understand the effects introducing these chemicals has right?
they do really help some people though, like people with the psychosis, mania.. and whatnot...

im a stubborn stubborn guy and even though im in pain and hurting and scared and i dont know whats going on and my memory is non-existent right now im not gonna give up because there has to be a better way of life, a better thing waiting for me to experience
and i think we all need to try to be more stubborn in that sense, but i seem to be a little different or something... i feel alot of ways at once and tend to argue with myself until i shut my brain down and cant feel anything or think straight at all - i guess dissociate

educating ourselves on what we are experiencing is important i think... the more we understand what we are going through the better equipped we are to fight it so the best medication in my opinion is knowledge but im a total nerd

keep fighting and try not to let the battles lost discourage you... the war is not over until we surrender, so long as we burn all the white flags - THERE WILL BE NO SURRENDER

Budfox,
You said that SSRIs and other drugs actually cause an imbalance. That's how they work. How do they cause imbalance in the brain? As far as I remember SSRIs inhibit the re-uptake of neurotransmitters like serotonin by pre-synaptic receptors. So is this against the brain's normal functioning? How is imbalance created when neurotransmitter molecules, that are supposed to be taken up by the pre-synaptic receptors, stay for some more time in the synapse? I had studied psychology for 3yrs after my +2. But then my mental health deteriorated and I gave up.I am completely not in sync with the recent developments.

I am not sure what causes depression....probably many causes...I am trying to find ways to treat and prevent depression...I can give an example.... hypothyroidism can cause depression....if so I would want to make very sure that my thyroid hormones were working right...what is going on in the brain is something that is being researched .....it is complicated...it is hard to understand...what do you think

Can being near particular fields/waves cause instant depression? Say a strong magnetic field or a particular kind of wave? Or being close to strong telecom towers?

I don't know...interesting...what have you learned about that

I dont know too...I'm asking...if you knew

It's that I dont like my present condition of underactivity and underperformance. And there are instances when I suddenly develop severe depression without warning. It's like a person getting suddenly very angry without any reason.

there are so many important things to look at...
my focus right now is pre-diabetes and its possible link to mood disorders..
as you already know....pre-diabetes/metabolic syndrome/insulin resistance...
I am hoping I find some goodies.....I love butter sugar and salt....and valium has helped me

Today I took shower after 3days and its summer here.

I also love butter,sugar and salt and salmon and turkey
BTW aren't you taking Celexa now? I found out that valium is a benzodiazepine, so is it helpful during depression?

yes I take celexa 10 mg every morning now....in addition to depression I have a panic disorder and anxiety....I can get very nervous...so now I take a 5 mg valium in the morning every couple of weeks...I used to take it every day as prescribed and it helped me a lot...tell me more about you

Panic attacks are bad. I used to have very strong ones in the afternoons. Strangely, I used to lie on my bed and try to feel those attacks with my full senses on and try to see what thoughts I was having then. Now they have decreased.

I feel very sad, no motivation, very little energy. Have become almost completely dysfunctional. I want to get back to normal again, I want to be happy, work and earn and maybe have a bf.

I want to know your numbers...I want to know more about your thyroid...
there may be some help here for YOU