Category: Depression

Ketamine infusions #2 & #3

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I underwent my second ketamine infusion on Monday and listened to 90s alt rock. That…was different. I have discovered that recreational drugs would not be a thing for me. Thank goodness this is all under a controlled environment and I’m being monitored by a nurse and a doctor.

On Tuesday, I ended up being grumpy and irritable again. I can’t say for certain whether I was irritable due to the treatment or my kids just being assholes. I suspect it was a combination of both. Regardless, I felt okay on Wednesday.

I underwent my third infusion Wednesday afternoon and I feel okay still. It’s Wednesday evening and my brain is firing on all cylinders, I’m not sleepy, but I am very “out of it.” I don’t feel “all here.” I know sleep will help rectify it but it will be interesting to discover whether I am irritable again tomorrow (a snowstorm that will keep my kid home is likely to do it) or if my mood is somewhat better. My mood rating according to my rating scale is a 7. My guess is that my doctor would like me to shoot for a 9 by my last infusion (happy) but I’m content to just be “okay.” I’m always “here.” I’m never doing great or feeling fantastic unless I’m manic. Is it possible to get the euphoria of mania without the downside of the crash? It would be nice to know. Although I do have more energy and motivation for things than I did before the infusions.

Most importantly, my baseline is whether I’m dealing with suicidal thoughts. I did suffer from a little depression 2 days after my first infusion but since then, I’ve been okay. Before my first infusion, I took the PHQ-9, and I scored a 17. Today, before my third infusion, I scored a 6. I’m not sure what the hell happened but I’ll take it.

I think my pain points will be trouble falling asleep and staying asleep and overeating. I’ve been having difficulty concentrating lately so that might also be a factor that may keep my PHQ-9 from dropping much more. And I’m also super restless. Like I have too much energy that I need to burn off. I’ll use my son’s words: “fizzy feet.”

Ketamine infusion #1

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I’m undergoing a series of ketamine infusions for treatment-resistant depression. It’s a series of 6 sessions over the course of several weeks. 1-2 sessions per week.

I had my first infusion on Wednesday for an hour and it was certainly trippy. I listened to soft rock in a completely new way.

I was kind of hoping that effects would begin to take place soon after the infusion. Relief can start to take place within an hour of the first treatment. While I was not depressed or suicidal, I was not happy. In fact, I was irritable. Angry. My doctor and I are on guard to ensure that the ketamine doesn’t trigger mania since I actually have bipolar disorder and not unipolar depression. At this point, I feel like mania would be an improvement.

I’m already pessimistic about the treatment even though my doctor says it can take 3-5 infusions for relief to kick in. My next infusion is Monday. Well, there’s one thing: If I ever wondered whether I’d like doing drugs recreationally, I’ve gotten my answer by getting it legally. (That’d be a no.)

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According to a survey published by the Commonwealth Fund and Social Science Research Solutions, a third of Americans reported feelings of stress, anxiety, and sadness that difficult to manage on their own. Researchers posit that the lack of universal health care coverage, financial problems, and the government’s pandemic response has impacted the mental health of Americans in a negative manner.

The FDA has approved a nasal spray called Spravato to treat suicidal patients. The drug was approved for those with treatment-resistant depression last year, but has also shown promise to reduce symptoms in suicidal patients in conjunction with therapy and other antidepressants. The drug, while FDA approved, is only administered by a health care provider and is not approved for home use.

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Katy Perry has revealed that she is experiencing waves of depression during the pandemic. While Stephen Fry, who has been outspoken about his struggle with bipolar disorder, admitted that he’s tried to commit suicide at least 3 times.

“There’s no future. There’s no sense of anything ahead of you. And you have to hope something will stop you. In my case it was just failed attempts and waking up in a hospital.”

Fry cited music, namely Beethoven, as a coping mechanism.

Celebrity Sensitivity: Michelle Williams

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Michelle Williams, singer most popularly known as part of the trio Destiny’s Child, has revealed that she struggles with depression and has struggled with depression since she was a teenager.

I had to choose to get out of bed and do whatever I needed to do to be happy.

A simplistic approach, but we’ll merely assume that Williams’s depression has been mild.

Sometimes you are going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed or some situation than might have you down in the dumps, but you have to choose to be happy.

According to The Miami Herald, Williams has not taken any medication but has used exercise, therapy, and positive thinking. But Williams isn’t anti-medication either.

Go see a professional so that they can assess you. It’s OK if you’re going through something. Depression is not OK, but it is OK to go get help.

Loose Screws Mental Health News

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Ebselen, an experimental bipolar disorder drug, has been found by British researchers to work like lithium but without lithium’s side effects. In mice. In testing, mice that were somehow made manic with “small doses of amphetamine” were placated with ebselen. Researchers are now moving on to testing on healthy human volunteers before studying those suffering with bipolar disorder.

A study, published in JAMA Neurology, discovered that retired NFL players were more likely to suffer from depression and brain impairment. The study comes on the heels of the suicides of Dave Duerson, Ray Easterling, and Junior Seau. Researchers suspect a link between “hard hits to the head and depression.” These problems have also been noted in NHL players and combat soldiers who have suffered a brain injury. Many of the retired NFL players developed a type of brain damage called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Duerson and Easterling were found to have CTE during autopsy. In related sports news, the UK’s Telegraph reports that depression is a problem for soccer players in England and Scotland.

According to Time magazine, ketamine—a drug that induces hallucinations and other trippy effects—may hold potential as an antidepressant.

And now scientists report on two formulations of drugs with ketamine’s benefits, but without its consciousness-altering risks, that could advance the drug even further toward a possible treatment for depression.

Ketamine is seen as a fast-acting antidepressant for those at high risk for suicide. GLYX-13, mentioned here previously, is a ketamine-like antidepressant currently in clinical trials. AstraZeneca has AZD6765, a “ketamine mimic” that does not appear to be as effective as actual ketamine.

New research has discovered that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of domestic violence. Even though the study evaluated men and women, the results for women were overwhelmingly striking.

It finds that women with symptoms of depression were 2.5 times more likely to have experienced domestic violence over their lifetimes than those in the general population, while those with anxiety disorders were more than 3.5 times more likely to have suffered domestic abuse. The extra risk grew to seven times more likely among those with post-traumatic stress disorder.

An analysis of more than 1 million Scandinavian women has shown that taking SSRIs during pregnancy may not increase the risk of stillbirth. This study could help revolutionize treating depression in pregnant women.

“From our study, we don’t find any reason to stop taking your medication, because untreated depression may be harmful for the pregnancy and the baby,” [Dr. Olof Stephansson, the lead author of the new report] told Reuters Health.

Finally, “gender identity disorder” has been removed from the DSM-V and has been replaced by “gender dysphoria,” a condition in which people are concerned about their gender identity. “Gender identity disorder” seemed to stigmatize gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals. The continuing inclusion of “gender dysphoria,” however, ensures that people suffering with gender identity disorder still have access to health care treatment. (In my opinion, the renaming of “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria” is really a politically correct change. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM back in 1973.)

Loose Screws Mental Health News

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An antipsychotic inhalation powder has been approved by the FDA for the treatment of agitation in adults with schizophrenia or bipolar I disorder. While loxapine (brand name: Adasuve) by Alexza Pharmaceuticals acts rapidly, the side effects include “bronchospasm and increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis,” according to Medscape. In case you don’t know, bronchospasm can lead to acute respiratory problems in people with lung disease, asthma, or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

Plans are for the drug to only be accessible through a medical facility with the ability to treat bronchospasms.

In related and somewhat interesting news, the Medscape article also notes that 3.2 million people in the U.S. are being treated for schizophrenia or bipolar I. “Of these, approximately 90% will develop agitation during the course of their illness.”

That’s an incredibly high number of people who develop agitation. Just sayin’.

According to an article in U.S. News & World Report, patients in a study dealing with depression seemed to have high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker for increased risk of heart and inflammatory disease. The lead researcher notes that “people with increased CRP have a two- to threefold risk of depression.” It is not clear whether CRP causes depression or is simply a sign of it. Increased levels of CRP tend to be seen in obese patients and those with chronic diseases.

“More than 21 million Americans suffer from depression, a leading cause of disability, according to Mental Health America.”

Note: the 2011 estimate of those residing in the U.S. stands at more than 311 million.

Depression is increasing among Japan’s public school teachers.

“A report by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology shows that in 2011, around 5,200 public school teachers had to go on sick leave due to various mental illnesses, including severe depression.”

The Japan Daily Press article also notes:

“The study also highlights the fact that the main reason for the increasing depression is a school environment that puts too much workload and pressure on the teachers that they cannot have a healthy work-life balance anymore, much less deal with students, their guardians and the paper work that comes with all of these. (emphasis mine)”

I recently finished a book by actor Tony Danza called I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had in which he chronicles his yearlong stint in Philadelphia’s inner city public school system. He echoes some of these sentiments as well. After trying to teach his students, he notes that it is difficult not to get involved in their personal lives as well. In the Epilogue, Danza writes:

“…I can only do so much. Where does teaching stop, and start? Where should it? I don’t really know. To engage my students, I found that I had to become engaged in their lives, their problems, and their futures. That connection was what made the job the most rewarding. Yet it was also the intensity of that involvement that, by the end of the year, had made the job of teaching so much tougher than I’d ever expected.”

It seems that Japan’s public school teachers are no different from American public school teachers.

Although 38 states require mental health background checks, only a quarter of states actually report their statistics to the federal NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System).

And surprise, according to a recent study, pot could lead to psychosis in teens or teens who smoke pot can later develop psychosis. I find it interesting that teens were actually evaluated after smoking pot.

Loose Screws Mental Health News

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According to an article in USA Today, researchers have found that siblings who argue could have negative effects on their mental health.

Researchers report that conflicts about personal space and property, such as borrowing items without asking and hanging around when older siblings have friends over, are associated with increased anxiety and lower self-esteem in teens a year later. And fights over issues of fairness and equality, such as whose turn it is to do chores, are associated with later depression in teens.

I’d like to tell these siblings to get over it, but I don’t have any siblings of my own to relate my experience to.

PBS’s Frontline reports that most soldiers who commit suicide have never seen combat or even been deployed. According to the Defense Department, the Army has the sharpest rate of suicides of all the military branches. About 53 percent of military personnel who took their lives in 2011 had no history of deployment to active combat zones such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Even more troubling is that 85 percent of those who committed suicide may have been deployed but not involved in direct combat. Even though the military has invested $50 million to study mental health and suicide, a stigma of getting help still remains. It seems as though military personnel would rather take their own lives than seek help.

An antidepressant called GLYX-13, currently under study, appears to work within hours and last for up to a week. The lead researcher reports little to no side effects on the drug, which is injected intravenously. The drug is in phase 2, which means that its effectiveness and safety are still being tested. I have my doubts about an intravenous drug. If doctors are not currently testing patients’ serotonin levels, how would they be able to prescribe an intravenous antidepressant?

Depression has passed asthma as the top disability among North American (U.S. and Canadian) teens.

Asthma had been the largest contributor to YLDs (years lived with disabilities) for youths in that age range in the US and Canada in 1990, but the study published in The Lancet on Thursday led by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, Seattle showed that in this group depression surpassed asthma to claim the number one spot in 2010.

Back in the 1990s, depression was not widely regarded or evaluated among teens. It was still “suck it up” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” My depression was viewed as laziness or “senioritis” among my teachers. I had no sympathy and very little leeway. Now, mental health is being taken more seriously for teens, and I think that’s a good thing.

See you if you can keep an elder person in mind during this holiday season. Senior depression is always on the rise during the holiday season due to problems with health, loneliness, or finances.

Anxiety. Depression. Suicidal Thoughts.

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Anxiety. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. They are all rolled up in one.

I am anxious about a lot of things these days. From something as mundane as sitting here typing on the computer to driving to cold calling a prospective client (which may never pan out because I’m too anxious to call right now). My anxiety has been debilitating in the past where I didn’t want to leave my home, and I fear it’s getting to the point of debilitation again on some days.

My anxiety depresses me. It keeps me from doing things that no one would think twice about. But here I sit, a prisoner in my own body, freaking out about nearly everything. To escape this, combined with my severe lethargy, I crawl into bed and sleep, hoping that when I wake up, things will be better. But they usually are not.

Please don’t get me wrong. I have a life many people would envy: a loving husband, a supportive family, and a steady job. I am thankful for the good things in my life. But this attitude of thankfulness and gratefulness doesn’t take away the depression inside of me.

I do not want to go back to the hospital. If I fear anything worse than death, it may be going back to a psych hospital. I have passing suicidal thoughts about hanging myself, but I haven’t been able to act upon it. I can’t determine whether I am a harm to myself in which case I would need to go to the hospital. The point of the hospital (for me) is to get me away from things that would cause immediate harm to myself. But I can’t be locked up in a hospital forever. (I guess I could in a state institution but that would be a nightmare.)

Somehow, existing in this jumbled mix is me. Somewhere inside, I am bubbly, wonderfully wacky, and beautifully strange. The depression and anxiety fuzz all of that. I am only some of what I used to be. I go to sleep, hoping for some kind of reprieve from this dark cloud that hangs over me.