Do you take antidepressants

Post Reply New Topic

I take because I have depression, I have episodes of depression, especially in the winter. In the spring of my depression goes away, only to return for the winter.

I'm taking a drug that is called "Seronil" its Latin name is "Fluoxetinum" 20 mg.

I wonder does other Aspies have problem with depression

Believe it or not I was thinking the same thing just before I noticed this thread.

I hate the darkness of winter and I always get depressed during the winter.

We have passed the 21th of December so each day will be a little longer.

Edit I don't take anything for it maybe I should.

I do take antidepressants. I am on Paxil. It seems to stabilize my mood, but does not really make me happy. I agree about the winter months bringing on the blues. Where I live it has been -20 celcius and below for a week now. That, combined with the darkness and personal isolation has me pretty down these days.

I was first diagnosed with depression at age 15, then social anxiety at 22, and now only after 10 years, have I been diagnosed with aspergers at age 25.

depression and anxiety disorders are partially hereditary, but you need consistent stress to trigger them.

because our brains "get better" at the neural pathways that are used most often, someone exposed to consistent stress when young is more likely to develop anxiety disorders and depression as an adult.

the normal course of a stress reaction involves an initial stimulus, a stress response from one part of the brain, then a signal to another part of the brain which evaluates the situation "is that a snake or just a stick? is that person a threat or are they just a person?", "am I in danger of ruining everything in my life or did I just mess up once?", and if the evaluation part of the brain says "calm down" it turns the stress hormones off and the anxiety stops.

the brain is amazing about being efficient, though, so if you use certain neural pathways more than others (especially when young) it will reinforce these pathways and your brain gets better at what those pathways do.

if you get many, many stress responses, then to make things more efficient, the evaluation part of the brain eventually gets fewer and fewer signals and you just sit around having a fight-or-fight response to any old stimulus because the part of your brain that stops and asks "do I need to panic over this?" isn't involved anymore.

if you do this for long enough it can burn out receptors for the neurotransmitters that make you happy and relaxed and content, which causes depression. this is why people with depression are often treated with medicines called SSRIs or SNRIs, which keep those chemicals that make you able to be happy or peaceful stay out in the open longer and thus have more of a change for your smaller-than-average number of receptors to receive them and make you something other than depressed. I'm on 20mg of Lexapro per day, which is an SSRI. the vast majority of antidepressants are not "happy pills", they just keep the neuroreceptors you already make from being re-absorbed as quickly, enabling your brain to get the "it's ok" signals that it's supposed to be getting.

another thing that has helped me a lot is mindfulness meditation. because your mind is "plastic" and gets better at things it does repeatedly (like being stressed out), repeatedly suspending your judgement of your thoughts and surroundings and just calming existing can mean that your brain develops more and more of those peaceful awareness pathways just like it reinforced your stress response pathways. there's significant evidence that this kind of meditation can help change the structure of the brain and help people manage and overcome mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.

but yes, people with ASD are probably more likely than the general population to have comorbid anxiety disorders (in fact I think something like 30% of us have social anxiety disorder, which is much higher than average for NTS, and depression is probably higher too but I don't remember) because we often have rather stressful lives, especially before we understand ourselves and can make choices based on our understanding of how our brains are different.

Last edited by Ca2MgFe5Si8O22OH2 on 27 Dec 2012, 4:32 am, edited 3 times in total.

I have been depressed several times, but I chose not to take any pills.

I just don't feel comfortable with the thought that they would tamper with my brain chemistry. Besides, I feel a lot more proud of myself when I cope with the depression without external aid

I'm on the tricyclic Anafranil, but it's for OCD, not depression.

I checked Fluoxetine in Wikipedia i and my Seronil is generic of Prozac

You sound like my older brother he is NT, but he also has depression. I told him to go to a psychiatrist may prescribe him some medicine, but he told me he did not like to be stuffed with drugs.

Diagnosed with Dysthymic Disorder and on a low dose of Prozac for a while. And it's the opposite with seasons, I get totally stressed out from April to October due to the intense light, the heat (I can't stand the feeling of sun on my skin) and everyone going out and yelling around. Therefore, I need antidepressants from spring to fall.

I'm taking Sertraline (trade names Zoloft and Lustral, among others) for anxiety, although it is an SSRI and is used for depression too.

It has helped some, I resisted taking it but I was in crisis and succumbed in the end. I'm now glad I did, because whilst I was at crisis point I knew I was bad but only now can I see how bad. It hasn't actually taken away my anxiety, but it has made my externalisation of it much less visible. It has also made me laugh at inappropriate moments and take my teasing too far with my children. I don't know whether that is because suppressing some of the anxiety symptoms has made my 'normal' behaviour come to the fore or whether it's some weird side-effect.

I have that seasonally affective disorder thing too, where I get more depressed in Winter.

I was first diagnosed with depression & anxiety in 2000, and took venlafaxine. It made me very physically unwell but I stuck it out for 6 months before quitting. No idea if it helped or not. Didn't really feel any improvement.

After that I just tried to ignore it and get on with life until 2005 when a friend of mine insisted I go to the doctor because she was worried about me. It was put down to depression & anxiety again. I was on fluoxetine for a short while, but switched to citalopram which I took until 2008. I never really felt it did anything for me.

Then I was diagnosed with an ASD in 2011, but was having significant difficulties that I believed were related to depression & anxiety. The psychiatrist insisted that I was not depressed, and that everything was due to anxiety. But that all changed when I was hospitalised in October for repeated serious self harm/suicide attempts. I was diagnosed with depression and put on trazodone. I do believe the trazodone does make some difference, but they've also just added lamotrigine (which I had previously been on as a mood stabiliser) to "boost" the trazodone.

I don't take antidepressants. I have a few friends that do, though.

I do, yes. I believe they saved my life.

The current combination is Cymbalta (SSNRI) in morning and Elavil (TCA) in evening.

dopress and seroquel.

I was prescribed antidepressants several times, a few different ones, but I never took them for long. They tend to give me this paranoid feeling that my identity is being stolen and I'm being turned into a robot or something. They definitely didn't do what they are meant to do, don't work properly on me. It's possible if I kept trying different ones, I might find one that worked, but I just don't want to anymore. I've fought depression most of my life and I think the suicidal thoughts ended about the same time as adolescence did. I may feel terrible a lot of the time, but it's not likely to kill me, and I just keep on fighting it without drugs as much as possible.

I do have to take diazepam sometimes for anxiety though, to prevent having meltdowns at work and such.

No.

Was put on them in middle school, tried them for like a month and I felt weird on them and they didn't really make me happier so I stopped. I tried Ritalin this year, tried for a week, made me dumber and didn't do what I wanted it to do, so I stopped.

I usually drink coffee or tea, and take vitamins and herbal things. Have much more luck with those over prescription things.