Posted by Racer on July 5, 2007, at 15:41:56
In reply to Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Meds, posted by dixie27 on July 5, 2007, at 14:50:05
I have no answers for you, but I do have a bunch of questions:
1. Does your depression come with a side order of anxiety? Or do you have a more purely melancholy sort? Sometimes different styles of depression respond differently to different medications. Also, are you emotionally reactive? That is, do you tend to feel better when something good happens? Or are you consistently depressed, even when good things happen?
2. Does your BDD get worse when the depression gets worse? Or do they have different cycles? Again, if the BDD is affected by anxiety that goes along with the depression, there are different options that might be more or less helpful.
3. What medications are you currently taking? How long have you been on them? Any dosage changes recently?
4. What symptoms are still a problem. The more specific the better, I've found, when describing what you're looking for help with. But even a kinda general, "Well, I've just got this feeling like I can't move..." works pretty well, too. Most of us are familiar with things like that.
5. What medications have you tried in the past? And how did they work? Did they help? Make things worse? Have horrible side effects?
Generally, if you think about BDD as a sort of kissing cousin to OCD, the drugs I'd think about would be those known as helpful in OCD: things like SSRIs, the atypical anti-psychotics, etc. But I don't know enough about what you're taking, and what you are still needing improvement in, to feel safe recommending anything...
Sorry to be so long, but I hope you can find some help here. There are a lot of people here who are very knowledgeable, and I'll bet you'll learn a lot of good information here.
Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:767882
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070630/msgs/767894.html