Posted by Elizabeth on June 25, 1999, at 23:35:02
In reply to What tests do I need?, posted by JohnL on June 25, 1999, at 21:24:24
Hi John.
I'm not sure what tests are needed offhand. I got diagnosed with depression when I was 14 and I don't remember all the things they did to me :-> except there were a lot of neurological tests because I was having headaches. (The headaches vanished a couple weeks after I started taking Prozac.)
I've read about Buspar+pindolol too. It sounds very promising. (I used pindolol to accelerate an AD response, with success.) Don't be afraid to push the Buspar dose as high as you need to.
The "atypical response to ADs" thing suggests to me that maybe what you're dealing with is not dysthymia but cyclothymia. Something you might try is Lamictal, as it's supposed to be both an AD and a mood stabilizer.
The other thing is, dysthymia often takes longer to heal with ADs than major depression does. (This sort of makes sense intuitively, I guess.) So you have to give antidepressants a long time. That's if they don't seem to be working at first, though, not if they make you worse. Did all of those ADs you tried make the depression worse? If not, for how long did you try the other ones?
Another thing I'd consider is going back to Paxil and using Wellbutrin or something to deal with the sexual dysfunction.
BTW as far as I know, Anafranil causes the same sex problems as the SSRIs. However, I think I read somewhere that a rare "adverse" reaction (well, side effect anyway) is having an orgasm when you yawn.
poster:Elizabeth
thread:7844
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990601/msgs/7863.html