Side effects - Do the suicidal thoughts go away after time?

[3333]

Swim understands that if you go insane with antidepressants you should stop using them, although if you don't go insane but still have a raise in suicidal thoughts does this go away after a few weeks of using the drug?

[0utrider]

SWIM thinks that if you have suicidal thoughts, whatsoever, SWIY should change to another AD immediatley

[TMM]

How would one be able to tell when they're insane?

I imagine that if the ADs aren't helping you, then you shouldn't really be taking them.

[staples]

Well, how long have you been on the particular AD so far?

SSRIs can take as long as 6 weeks to start showing improvement in mood, but I thought they were known to often worsen mood, including an augmentation of suicidal thoughts during this period.

[Nahbus]

"insane" really doesn't exist.. It's just a matter of your diagnosis, or whatever is happening, chemically, in your brain.
But yeah, if you are still, or increasingly having suicidal thoughts, go to your doc ASAP and fix your meds.

[beentheredonethatagain]

crazy or insane people do not believe they are, so if you think you might be , good news you probaly aren't.

[beentheredonethatagain]

Originally Posted by 3333

Swim understands that if you go insane with antidepressants you should stop using them, although if you don't go insane but still have a raise in suicidal thoughts does this go away after a few weeks of using the drug?

what is the name of the medication?

[FrankenChrist]

SwiFr confirms it can get worse before it gets better. Give it some time.

[3333]

Swim isn't on any yet, just taking precautions beforehand. Swim is just wondering whether you think if swim did have suicidal thoughts with ADs, they would go away after a week or two. Swim is a bit worried about using them.

[staples]

A week or two is on the very short end, and usually the first antidepressant isn't the right one (i.e, it'll have too many side effects or will not address the symptoms) and your doctor will switch to a different one (perhaps depending on how you reacted to the first). For mild side effects, your doctor may want to wait a week or so to see if they subside, as they sometimes do.

So if it takes a few medications before finding the right one, it could take at least a couple months. But, as my doctor explained, you don't necessarily start back at square one when switching SSRIs, and it might then only take 1-3 weeks to start having beneficial effects. But that's still after a few weeks of trying a first medication.

Another consideration may be other issues that have depression as a symptom. For instance, I've read that those untreated for ADHD can become depressed because they try hard and don't do well on many tasks, so they are treated for depression when they should be treated for ADHD.

[humdroid]

I would go back to the doctor if I were you. Some AD's do have this effect, and its obviously a bigger risk with depression itself, being the thing these meds are prescribed to help.
You could change meds or go non-pharm. My depressions severe, and the supplement/herbal route is where its at for me. If your interested have a search online. I read up loads, and found my own personal suitable supplements. It was worth it. Safety applies here though too, just like vitamins, read up on this too.
I do non med therapy still with an art therapist, as this has been found most suitable for me.
Bottom line, suicidal thoughts are always due to irrational beliefs, conscious or unconscious, and they are not realistic. Depression can make us believe things like this, its not insanity (psychosis), its an effect of depression, so pills with effects like this can increase it more, and therefore, to me, were too much of a risk.

[cannagirl]

Yes, for me, they did go away most definitely. One might also consider trying St. John's wort...at least discussing with your doctor. It's a mild SSRI. I have tried zoloft, paxil and prozac and st johns wort was the best.

But if you are using a lot of other drugs, or even just one depending on what it is, the SSRIs might not be able to do what they are supposed to do. discuss all drugs you use with your doc. They will not judge you or turn you in.

[RaverHippie]

They would probably go away and it's not too common of a side effect, so there's no promise SWIY'll even deal with these sort of thoughts.

Reputation Comments on this post:

For the center postings. :)

[dreamingawake]

woops i'll try again!

I take paroxetine (paxil to american folk) - thoughts like that don't happen to everyone according to my doc but if they do its usually in the first few weeks of starting it as you are adjusting to it. If you ever feel suicidal on an AD go to yr doctor quick but don't stop taking it, because I can tell you from experience that it will make you feel terrible if you stop taking it out of the blue.

[Heretic.Ape.]

Suicidal ideation is not all too uncommon during the initial phase of beginning antidepressants especially if you are younger (mainly teens). It should go away after the initial adjustment. If not consult your physician.
Sudden termination of drug treatment can cause severe anxiety and increased depression.

[grimdestruction]

im 16 and during 8th grade i prescribed 50mg of zoloft and 35 mg of strattera i felt dull and plain almost like my personality was suck out i had none of my creativity (I'm a very artsy person) and i also had thoughts of suicide ALOT eventually i went cold turkey and i felt fine then the withdrawal set in and i vomited for a couple days i suggest to go off gradually but this year about 3 months ago i had the suicidal thoughts kick back in and now i just got prescribed today wellbutrin with strattera

[dark12]

I have been on Wellbutrin XL for about a year now.
Before I started taking it I made my girlfriend promise not to go to bed without me because I would often stay up with my head filled with suicidal thoughts. That was when my depression peaked. A week later I began taking Wellbutrin. It seemed like I was almost instantly relieved of my problems. I realize this is not possible because of the way ADs work. Probably placebo or something.
I just want you to know that if depression does affect your daily life, get treated whether its meds or therapy. It is now a year later and I feel like a new person. My girlfriend is also much happier now that I am not always in the dumps.

[kuplo]

Swim has been on almost all known AD's, some of them dont work at all, and others produce very very violent dreams of killing people in mass droves, the doctors quickly switched his medications some AD's provided worsening effects of the feeling of suicide, the doc's switched him off of these too. They unfortunatley have yet to make a drug that will work with swim that helps him so he is just under constant survelence via phone or helpers.

kuplo added 1 Minutes and 15 Seconds later...

Wellbutrin was one of the worst for swim, gave him crazy thoughts that he had people speaking to him in his head about hurting other people. Doctor also quickly changed hm off of that as well.

[beaver]

Hello, this is my first posting i this forum. I am a member of a large depression-anxiety group for 3 years and I have heard some hundred stories about suicidal ideation and our task is to find ways how to remove them in the sense of curing but not in the sense of masking a symptom.
I do not share the idea the antidepressants are working and the only thing you have to do is visiting a doctor.
There is an idea which is unspoken that somebody else should be responsible (a doctor) and there is a second idea that the health care system is able and willing to do all the things which are possible. But this is not the case.
Health care system has rules and the name of the game is money. Advertising meds like ADs to the public is the tip of an ice mountain and it is a billion dollar market.
But the promises from advertising are misleading and will not be fulfilled.
There are two major reasons, one is the manipulation of the outcome of clinical trials
by ghostwriters which lead to misinformed public and misinformed doctors.
Clinical trials are sometimes made in countries where their outcome does not need to be handed to the FDA. It is the choice of the manufacturers what they will publish and they take control of the published articles by hiring ghostwriter companies.

For further reading I suggest:
http://www.naturalnews.com/023052.html
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...d.0040286&ct=1

The second point which prohibits a curing is the fact that ADs are not better than placebos. I am lucky that this is not only my opinion and I am assisted by 5 medical universities. In February 2008 a meta study had been published where 47 clinical trials
(partly unpublished datas from FDA) had been inspected. The outcome is that ADs are not better than placebo.
You can read the full text article here:

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...&ct=1#toclink2
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...50045&ct=1#top

On side effects of medication had been written a lot. But do you know that ADs
can destroy the white matter of the brain?
Look here:
http://www.medicalimagingmag.com/reu...17epid002.html

So it makes sense to leave the idea that a doctor should be the only source of knowledge. Please notice also that the day when your doctor passed his examinations may be many years back and your hope that doctor is good informed and up-to-date with the knowledge needed may not be fulfilled. In my opinion it is a better idea to gather knowledge by yourself. Please notice that this a break in habits because you will learn that you are responsible for your health, too. It is not true that a medical
is the only person in the world which is responsible for you. A medical doctor is a paid helper, paid by you ( or your insurance ).

On the other hand this forum offers the possibility to print out the documents cited and to discuss them with your doctor. You will be the good informed patient and
if your doctor is willing to talk to you which is a problem of time and intensity of care
you will have better discussions and insights. You can only win.
But you will also be aware that a doctor who behaves as a "5 minute man" may not
be the right person to take care for you.

Depression is a complicated thing which changes brain parts which is verified by neuroimaging, which changes the glucose used in the brain, which changes many hormones and changes the immune system by changing some interleukines.
Do not await that a simple pill can cure this. There several methods needed in combination.

The major question in depression which is needed for curing is what is the reason for
elevated interleukine-6 level in combination with 2-4 fold elevated cortisol level.
They come as twins.
Some of the answers will surprise you.

The severest form of depression may require a hospitalization.
The results from a blood screening of hospitalized patients with severe depression (unipolar, bipolar and schizophrenia) in German mental hospitals showed that a third up to the half of the patients are infected with borna virus.
A screening of the population showed in Australia an infection rate of 1% out of 15000
tested persons. If the virus is active the most severest depressions occur.
A hospitalization is needed and antidepressant meds do not show any good results
(because they cannot kill a virus). The virus had been first detected in horses which refuse to eat and later in sheep, cattle, dogs and cats. The virus can jump to humans without problems (zoonose) and the secretion of the nose from cats and dogs is the
way of spreading. But the virus is not always active. In the late 80s and the first 90s there had been a reliable method invented for detecting this virus.
But there is another way of spreading the virus and it is one of the most shameful things in medicine. The way goes from blood donors to patients by blood transfusion.
Donor blood is not been tested for this virus. Tests are done only for hepatitis and HIV
but not for Borna virus. The remedy is simple and a virus killer (Amantadine) is used for 3 weeks and depression is cured.

More details here:

http://www.neurotransmitter.net/bornavirus.html
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/reprint/03-0764fjev1.pdf
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/22/12222
ttp://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=972733140&dok_var=d1&dok_ext=pdf&filen ame=972733140.pdf

If you have already the knowledge about the chronic form of lyme disease which causes depression you could estimate that around the half of severest depressions
in mental hospitals could be caused by viruses and which are not diagnosed properly and which are not treated properly. Antidepressant medication is not a curing in this case but a virostatic med will do the job.

Here is an example from an open trial:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...t=AbstractPlus


Why do you await a valid diagnosis from your doctor and the proper remedy if your doctor does not know anything about these diseases and does not make the necessary blood tests?

I understand the question of the posting what can I do in addition to get rid off
the suicidal ideation.
Well, we have some easy to do answers which are much better than only masking
a symptom. And they have no side effects and do not cost much money.
But they would not answer the question for the reason what causes the interleukines
to be elevated. This investigation work should be done.

Let us talk about simple methods what you can do and what doctor does not prescribe.
First thing is to change food.
The reason is that saturated fats (from animals) and high sugar intake keep depression alive by turning down the BDNF level which is responsible for new nerve cell growth. You can read it that the shrinking of the hippocampus is kept alive, that
short time memory is bad and the depletion of serotonin receptors in CA1 and CA3 region of hippocampus is kept alive (which is also a reason for amygdala to enlarge, look also the mechanism for anxiety for unknown reason) .
The easiest way is to avoid all meat and milk products (fatty cheese!) for the next month. And to avoid direct sugar intake and sweet limonades
I suggest also the additional intake of 3 gram fishoil (omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids) daily which "repairs" the remaining errors in food.
This way is slow working and it needs a month to kick in but it a really repairing work
because the natural level of BDNF will increase and the natural growth of new nerve cells and receptors can take place.
If you want to speed things up you can do walking, jogging in addition which halves the kick in time and gives a better synapsin1/2 response.

Another tricky method is eating molasses, walnuts and almonds.
They contain uridine which is a substance found in mother milk and which makes babies happy.
Or more seriously it works antidepressive and the synergy from omega-3 and uridine is strong and fast.

Details here:
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-3724.html

My test results are:
3 gram omega-3 plus 150 gram sugar beet molasses (or sugar cane molasses)
is working (4x2 spoonful over the day), but please have in mind if you are diabetic that molasses is containing 68% sugar. Molasses where sugar is removed is used for feeding cattle and it is available for very low price but it tastes horrible.

An easier method is to visit supermarket and buy walnuts and almonds, needed are 100 gram daily over the day in severe depression which could be reduced after a week to 30 gram daily. Please use a mixer for crushing the nuts down to pieces.


With best regards
Hugo

[staples]

Originally Posted by beaver

I do not share the idea the antidepressants are working and the only thing you have to do is visiting a doctor.
There is an idea which is unspoken that somebody else should be responsible (a doctor) and there is a second idea that the health care system is able and willing to do all the things which are possible. But this is not the case.
Health care system has rules and the name of the game is money. Advertising meds like ADs to the public is the tip of an ice mountain and it is a billion dollar market.
But the promises from advertising are misleading and will not be fulfilled.
There are two major reasons, one is the manipulation of the outcome of clinical trials
by ghostwriters which lead to misinformed public and misinformed doctors.
Clinical trials are sometimes made in countries where their outcome does not need to be handed to the FDA. It is the choice of the manufacturers what they will publish and they take control of the published articles by hiring ghostwriter companies.

For further reading I suggest:
http://www.naturalnews.com/023052.html
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...d.0040286&ct=1

The second point which prohibits a curing is the fact that ADs are not better than placebos. I am lucky that this is not only my opinion and I am assisted by 5 medical universities. In February 2008 a meta study had been published where 47 clinical trials
(partly unpublished datas from FDA) had been inspected. The outcome is that ADs are not better than placebo.
You can read the full text article here:

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...&ct=1#toclink2
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/per...50045&ct=1#top

They're not better than placebos for moderate depression, but they are for severe depression, is what I understand from the recent news about SSRI's (and SSRI's specifically...). But I've also heard that the pharmaceutical companies are some of the largest funders behind these news articles, as you say the name of the game is money, and the patents on many SSRI's will expire eventually which would suggest that the recent, misleading, reports that SSRIs are no better than placebos are engineered to ensure profits for newer, antipsychotics which will be secured by newer patents. In other words, where there may have been a bias for the original data that indicated SSRI's helped a greater portion of people, there's reason now for a bias in the opposite direction.

Originally Posted by beaver

On side effects of medication had been written a lot. But do you know that ADs
can destroy the white matter of the brain?
Look here:
http://www.medicalimagingmag.com/reu...17epid002.html

Correlation is not causation.

Originally Posted by beaver

So it makes sense to leave the idea that a doctor should be the only source of knowledge. Please notice also that the day when your doctor passed his examinations may be many years back and your hope that doctor is good informed and up-to-date with the knowledge needed may not be fulfilled.

While I agree it is extremely important to educate oneself on ones own mediations and treatments, I believe doctors must either keep up to date or stop practicing medicine.

Originally Posted by beaver

A screening of the population showed in Australia an infection rate of 1% out of 15000 tested persons. If the virus is active the most severest depressions occur.

A very small figure, and perhaps region-specific. I'm not sure if this really adds to your argument.

Originally Posted by beaver

Why do you await a valid diagnosis from your doctor and the proper remedy if your doctor does not know anything about these diseases and does not make the necessary blood tests?

My doctor, at least, required a blood test.

Originally Posted by beaver

I understand the question of the posting what can I do in addition to get rid off
the suicidal ideation.
Well, we have some easy to do answers which are much better than only masking
a symptom. And they have no side effects and do not cost much money.
But they would not answer the question for the reason what causes the interleukines
to be elevated. This investigation work should be done.

First of all, antidepressents do not simiply mask the symptoms, second of all, (again, at least with my doctor) information was given to me on just about every thing you mentioned (diet, exercise, etc) before drug therapy was suggested.

Even if every person being treated with an AD who experienced alleviation from depression was truly a victim of the placebo effect, why not let them live depression-free?

Reputation Comments on this post:

Well reasoned response

[lostinla]

One small note to add. Many times, MANY times ADs are prescribed to patients who really are not just depressed, they could have bipolar II, which is a tough diagnosis but honestly it's the 'diagnosis du jour'... If a true bipolar personaltiy is put on any SSRIs those suicidal ideations usually are not BAD, anything with the word suicide though --most docs take off immediately or taper. The combo ADs sometimes do worse with the suicidal thoughts,nightmares, almost a manic type behavior for a few weeks. It's tough as it truly takes at least six months to PEAK even though it's 'in your system' and should start working in a month, with Paxil/effexor/cymbalta-they say two weeks. A true diligant physician will go over you with a fine tooth comb/ your brain that is, and follow it through, or go on to the next step of testing for bipolar I or II.
The very important thing to remember is that yes, many MANY patients with chronic Lyme disease/fibromyalgia/CFS- will be mis diagnosed for years at all ends of the psych spectrum.
Make SURE the physician rules out ANY other possibilities. ASK ASK ASK...... A GP honestly has to have a forte in that area to have the full grasp of it. It is good that you are asking these questions prior to taking them.

ASK. Are there any symptoms , even little things that swiy let's go to the wayside, that need to be addressed first. Blood work. Not just a CBC CHEM and a TSH. That shows nothing for those who have chronic illnesses, low immunity, thus they won't even have an elevated wbc count.

Be your own advocate for sometimes no one else will.
With depression: which came first >the chicken or the egg......

[beaver]

Hello lostinla,

bipolar is treated with some differences to unipolar depression.
One of the needed tasks is a solution what to do in case of manic state.
On the other hand the ways used must be effective to improve the mood
without negative side effects, of course.

Possible ways are the intake of a weak antidepressant uridine which does not
cause a manic state which is verified by clinical trials from McLean Hospital
in combination with omega-3 capsules (fishoil, 3000 mg daily) and some
sports/exercising which is clear mood improving.

Uridine is part of the mother milk and it is considered as safe. Even big companies
like Nestle add it to their baby food but in low dosis which is making
babies happy but adults have a 20 times or more higher body weight and
therefore uridine intake must be 20 or more times higher compared to babies.
Consider 100 mg to 1000 mg as a working dosis for adults.

Natural sources could be molasses where sugar beet molasses is
containing 862 mg uridine per 1000 gram molasses but also 67%
sugar which is high and not suited for diabetes people.
If you don't mind the high sugar content try 4 table spoon molasses over the day
in combination fishoil. The mood improving effect appears on day 2 or 3
if you are on fishoil.

Another source are walnuts and almonds but they are not intended
for daily high intake because dry nuts need a lot of digestion enzymes.
In case of emergency they are working wonderful mood lifting.
If you option for high nuts intake I suggest to consider to add enzymes
like Wobenzym, for example or pineapple (bromelain) or other sprouts.

A better solution will be sprouting nuts for daily use.
Let the sprouts create their own enzymes which is the cheapiest solution.

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-3724.html

From Havard University we grab the message that bipolars are only responders
to Lithium 55-60% what causes the question what to do with the non-responders.
From Prof. Servan Schreiber we had to learn that bipolars react to fishoil 80%
in Havard clinical trial.
In case of a manic state are alternatives Calcium antagonists which
turned out to be effective without causing tiredness all day.

Let me cite:

http://psychiatry.jwatch.org/cgi/con...ull/2002/710/1

Comment: Verapamil is an appealing alternative to lithium and anticonvulsants because it does not cause cognitive dysfunction, sedation, or weight gain, and it seems safer during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Like other antimanic drugs, verapamil may be more effective for mania than for depression.

Regards
Hugo

[rocknroll714]

From my experience the suicidal thoughts peaked at one week in and were completely gone by three weeks in. This seems to be the trend, SSRIs/SNRIs/TCAs/MAOIs make you worse at first, then eventually make you feel better with enough time. It can take as long as 6 weeks for them to fully kick in by the way.