Are you living with mental illness?

Hobbes

Well-Known Member
Some people think depression means sadness. It is much worse, it is the total absence of joy and hope.
The closest description of the pain caused by my depression, other that the total absence of joy and hope, is extreme fatigue.

It's like you've been driving for hours and have hours left, you can't stop and pull over for a sleep, there's a physical as well as psychological aspect to the pain.

Depression is the worst disease there is, torture then often suicide.

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Hobbes

Well-Known Member
farmerfischer said:
I have the same..
Mines called schizophrenia/ bipolar disorder..

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I have the same, my doctor called it schizo affective disorder - schizophrenia plus a mood disorder.

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RIS

Well-Known Member
when people refer to anything they used to love and now neglect with I don't get the time... its a good sign something is cooking.
They don;t don;t get the time cause they \just can;t even'.
I am 100% this mentality.
I have depression, anxiety, and bipolar 1. I am going to try TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation) since standard medications don't seem to work for long. I have no idea how this will end up. I do have some hope for this process but was wondering if anyone here has ever tried TMS?
 
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Hobbes

Well-Known Member
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Ketamine for Depression: What to Know

Jeff Winograd didn’t know an adult life without depression. Since he was 20 years old, he had tried virtually every antidepressant on the market. But he says, “The depression was just a constant.”

By the time he was 45 years old, by then a father of two small children and a struggling-at-the-time film and video producer in Portland, OR, Winograd had hit rock bottom. The depression was so severe that he felt paralyzed by it.

“I sat on the couch all day, unable to move, I couldn’t move my feet,” he says. “And I was suicidal. I would sit and try to figure out how I was going to do it without hurting my kids.”

It was around that time that a doctor friend told him about ketamine for treatment-resistant depression.


What Is Ketamine?

Ketamine got its start in Belgium in the 1960s as an anesthesia medicine for animals. The FDA approved it as an anesthetic for people in 1970. It was used in treating injured soldiers on the battlefields in the Vietnam War.

Emergency responders may give it to an agitated patient who, for example, they have rescued from a suicide attempt. That’s how Ken Stewart, MD, says doctors began to realize that the drug had powerful effects against depression and suicidal thoughts.

“Someone is trying to jump off a bridge and they give him ketamine in the ambulance to calm him down and 9 months later, he says, ‘I haven’t felt suicidal for 9 months.’

“When enough stories like that started to pile up, doctors said, ‘Maybe there’s something here,’” says Stewart, an emergency physician and founder of Insight Ketamine in Santa Fe, NM. Like the drug itself, Stewart got his start in combat medicine during the Vietnam War. Some doctors also use ketamine to treat suicidal thoughts.

Ketamine causes what doctors call a “dissociative experience” and what most anyone else would call a “trip.” That’s how it became a club drug, called K, Special K, Super K, and Vitamin K among others. Partiers inject it, put it in drinks, snort it, or add it to joints or c



“Ketamine can produce feelings of unreality; visual and sensory distortions; a distorted feeling about one’s body; temporary unusual thoughts and beliefs; and a euphoria or a buzz,” says John Krystal, MD, chief of psychiatry at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, where he is a leader in studying ketamine’s antidepressant effects.

The trip lasts about 2 hours. But there are risks of casual use. The most serious are unconsciousness, high blood pressure, and dangerously slowed breathing. The drug could also cause long-term problems, such as ulcers and pain in the bladder; kidney problems; stomach pain; depression; and poor memory. Ketamine could be fatal for people who abuse alcohol or if you take it while you’re drunk.

But the drug’s potential as a treatment for depression and antidote to suicidal thoughts has drawn researchers’ attention. They’ve studied and administered it in controlled, clinical settings to help with treatment-resistant depression and other conditions.

To be clear: Casual use is not a treatment for depression. But doctors have developed a protocol for medically supervised use that may help people who don’t get relief from other medications.

“We’re reaching out in a new way to patients who have not responded to other kinds of treatments and providing, for some of them, the first time that they’ve gotten better from their depression,” Krystal says.

Receiving Ketamine

Ketamine comes in several forms. The only one that the FDA has approved as a medication for depression is a nasal spray called esketamine (Spravato). It’s for adults who either haven’t been helped by antidepressant pills, have major depressive disorder, or are suicidal. They continue on their antidepressant and receive esketamine at a doctor’s office or in a clinic, where a health care provider watches over them for 2 hours after the dose.

For treatment-resistant depression, patients usually get the nasal spray twice a week for 1 to 4 weeks; then once a week for weeks 5 to 9; and then once every week or 2 after that.
 
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Hobbes

Well-Known Member
The spray has a “black box” warning about the risk of sedation and trouble with attention, judgment, and thinking, as well as risk for abuse or misuse of the drug and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

Other forms of ketamine not approved by the FDA for mental health conditions include IV infusion, a shot in the arm, or lozenges. Most research looks at ketamine given by IV. You can only get it by IV or shot in a doctor’s office. Some doctors will prescribe lozenges for at-home use -- often to keep depression at bay between infusions.

At his clinic, Stewart only sees patients who have referrals from a doctor that diagnosed them with treatment-resistant depression. Stewart doesn’t make these diagnoses. He starts patients with a research-based six infusions spaced over 3 weeks.

“That’s how people get started,” Krystal says. “Two infusions a week, and then they go down to one infusion a week, and then most people go down to eventually one infusion every 2 to 4 weeks.”

Most research stops the initial treatment at 6 weeks. There’s no research to suggest that more than 6 weeks in a row brings more benefits, though people do go back for boosters if symptoms return.

The IV infusion lasts about 40 minutes. The dissociative experience starts quickly and takes about 15 to 20 minutes to wear off after the drip ends. A doctor is always on site during the whole process. The doctor isn’t necessarily in the room with the person being treated but is available if they need anything or become anxious or confused.

While the patient is on the drip, Stewart says, they look asleep. Most don’t move or talk. Though some, he says, may talk or make a comment about the music playing on their headphones or some part of their experience or perhaps ask where they are. Unless they need something, Stewart says, no one interferes.

Christa Coulter-Scott, a pediatric nurse from Athens, GA, got treatment in a similar setting in Gainesville, GA. She says she didn’t want to wake up. “It was like a spiritual journey. I felt warm, safe, and confident. As the treatment went on, all the weight of stress was taken off of me in layers. I felt like I had the power of the universe at my fingertips.”

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It's a bold statement from a 51-year-old who had felt powerless to depression and anxiety since childhood. As an adult, she’s also been diagnosed with PTSD and chronic pain. Coulter-Scott has tried 10 different antidepressants over the years. But the dark cloud of depression never budged.



Christa Coulter-Scott says ketamine treatment eased the depression she's had for most of her life.

Yet, after ketamine therapy, she says, “My head feels lighter, and I don’t have that gloomy, dark, heavy feeling in my mind. And everything around me looks brighter -- the sun, the lights in my office.”

When she returned to work the next day after an infusion, she asked a co-worker whether the lighting had been changed. It hadn’t. “I don’t know if it’s a side effect of ketamine or a side effect of being less depressed.”

Winograd describes it similarly. He talks about feeling like he was floating in a color. “It was the first time I understood the expression ‘happy place.’ It was this space where everything that had to do with my real life disappeared, and I didn't have any of that weight that I carry with me everywhere I go.”

The antidepressant effects of ketamine wear off in hours, days, or a couple weeks in people who only get a single infusion. The series of infusions has longer-lasting effects.

Coming Back to Real Life

At Stewart’s clinic, after the mind-altering part of the ketamine experience is over, a health provider sits and talks with the patient in a process called integration. Other clinics may recommend that patients continue their talk therapy elsewhere.

“It’s my sense that this is important,” Stewart says. “When people come out of this really profound experience, they have a lot to say, and these are people who have a lot of baggage and a lot of experiential pain. A lot of times, ketamine leads to an unpacking of that baggage.”

Krystal, who provides IV and intranasal ketamine for treatment-resistant mood disorders at the VA Connecticut Health System and Yale-New Haven Hospital, encourages patients to continue with their psychotherapy after ketamine treatment.

Doctors who administer IV ketamine tend to recommend patients continue with their regular antidepressant regimen, too. As for the nasal spray, it’s only approved for use along with an oral antidepressant.

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Rico2016

Active Member
hello op i am pulling for you thanks for sharing your heart warm story.

i will also agree that exercise and eating healthy will be key for you. do you exercise and take care of your body?
 

StonedGardener

Well-Known Member
This f'ing world , sometimes nice , so many times a nasty f-er ! I'm being prescribed with meds for those two problems , THAT I DONOT F'ING HAVE ! ........trying to treat pain from fibromyalgia.........it ain't working , however it ( Vrylar ) is making me sicker than a dog ! F that shit , at least for me. What I'd like is the Doc to shoot me up with a great big " cocktail " in a hypodermic needle ( and I don't mean alcohol) !
 
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