I am so frusterated and tired of trying!

Hi ChangingMyMind. I had a severe depression that started in July 2013, about the same time as when I had a complicated gallbladder surgery. Prior to surgery, I was on Prozac and stopped it cold turkey. That was probably a mistake. After that I went thru 4 or 5 antidepressants that either had horrible side effects or they just didn't work. I was on celexa for a while and it didn't help me. I may as well have taken a sugar pill. I saw a psychiatrist and a therapist, very temporarily. My terrible health insurance had very limited mental health coverage and I found I could not afford $500,00 a month to see a psychiatrist and therapist. My primary care doc took over prescribing my depression meds.

I have a book on CBT but I have not done much with it, having an extremely busy work schedule. I read some of it and felt like I was going back to school. During this time I also began to suffer severe migraines. I had recently started Wellbutrin and to make a long story short, they prescribed amitriptyline for my migraines. The amitriptyline helped my migraines and it seems to be the first thing helping my depression. Amitriptyline is an old tricylic med.

I wish you the best. Depression is a mean beast. I wonder if you could get help from your insurance commissioner for the problems with the insurance. I wish you the best.

How are the side effects on Amitriptyline?

My issue is severe side effects. SSRIs and SNRIs both take away the depression and anxiety. The problem it's they cause intolerable side effects and lots of them. I don't mean common stuff like weight gain or sexual dysfunction (although I get those too)... That would be a walk in the park. It's stuff like TMJ, vertigo, extreme hyper somnia, low blood pressure, weakness, acne, itching, hives, rash, GI issues... Just to name a few.

If the TCAs are possibly better in their side effects for me it would be worth it.

ChangingMyMind!

I'm really concerned that you're getting yourself into worse and worse problems by trying these drugs. Usually the drugs that are less often used are that way because they have more and/or more dangerous side effects. If I were you, I'd be trying hard to get off all of these drugs and trying hard with every non-drug way to help your depression.

- v

Yes that is my current take on it as well. I have tried so many drugs and have bad reactions so I am more cautious when it comes to meds now. That is why I tell the doc no when she mentions TCAs, MAOIs, or any antipsychotics because the side effect profiles are worse than what I'm experiencing now. So the plan at the moment is to continue mindfulness, snap club, therapy, yoga, light exercise and wait to try TMS again since it helped a little before. I also plan to see a functional medicine doctor to see if they have any suggestions. I am going to add in light therapy (gonna buy the light for the house) and change my diet. Although I'm going to wait to talk to the functional medicine doc and/or a nutritionist about my diet and what she recommends.

To add on with the CBT post... I would recommend Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) - Psychotherapy, Research, Training

I used this in therapy and while it did not work for me, I learnt some things that I use occasionally. However, this is good as it goes through module by module and gives really in depth details on what you might feel and what you should do.

My pdoc also recommended moodgym: https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome but I did not try it.

hoping you find something soon!

What is Snap Club?

This is vitals area of expertise. He explains it in this thread.

http://forums.psychcentral.com/depre...n-escaped.html

I don't know where it came from. If I google it I can't find anything on it.