Zoloft for BP depression

[scatty]

I started taking 50 mgs of zoloft last week and I was wondering if there were any success stories of it getting rid of depression without causing mania? Risperdal is supposed to prevent that, but I'm still wary.

[andie]

I mean it's possible. Not all anti-depressants can drive you off the deep end. I received a revised diagnosis of bipolar II and they gave me 150mg of Zoloft when I left the hospital. Then my therapist said I had major depression so I'm sticking with that. Honestly, Zoloft made me JOYOUS and WONDERFUL but I think it was just post-release euphoria haha. Depakote is supposed to balance me out a little bit so who knows?

I suggest keeping a mood calendar.

[Anna]

Um, it really depends on your flavor of BP honestly. Some people do fine on ADs, others don't. In my experience, no matter what mood stabilizers I'm on, SSRIs drive me BATSHIT in almost no time at all. But I'm a BP person who cannot tolerate too much messing with serotonin. You may not be. Just increase it carefully, and keep an eye out. I'd say if you have experiences of SSRIs making you manic before, be extra cautious.

Anna

[Closure]

Ah, antidepressants...

In my not-so-humble opinion, giving anyone suspected to be bipolar an antidepressant, especially an SSRI, as monotherapy is very highly questionable on the part of the prescribing pdoc. It is almost a classic scenario for someone thought to be depressed to be given an SSRI, shoot off into orbit, land themselves in the hospital, and there be diagnosed as bipolar. Another less classic but still very common scenario is for someone thought to be depressed to be fed antidepressant after antidepressant, all of which seem to work well initially but which invariably soon poop out, until someone down the line, often years later, gets the bright idea that they might just be bipolar.

I myself have never been on monotherapy with SSRIs, and I frankly do not want to know what it would do to me. But what I do know is that a minimal starting dose of any of the three SSRIs I have been on, combined with a full load of mood stabilizers (either valproate or lithium with or without carbamazepine) would make me make a full cycle every single day, with generally a hard, fast crash going from the high end (sometimes about normal, sometimes clearly hypomanic) to the low end (severely, debilitatingly depressed); I never even increased the doses of these, so I do not know what higher doses would do to me.

[scatty]

My pdoc says that risperdal will help with any mania, but she is seeing me Dec 1st to check on me. I did try celexa before I knew I was BP, which led to my BP dx because I was batshit. So far I feel the depression lifting, I am wanting to go out more, and be around people more. I just have to be careful and be aware.

Thanks for the input ladies. If there are any other sucess/horror stories I would be interested in hearing them!

[crtclms]

I used zoloft early in my treatment, when it and prozac were *the* SSRIs. I didn't enjoy it, and it made me agitated, but I didn't get sent into outer-space, the way Prozac did me. Also, I don't believe I had been put on a mood stabilizer yet, but if I was, it was tegretol. Whether with tegretol or not, it just didn't do much but make me jittery and querulous.

Wellbutrin has been the only anti-depressant that has worked for me.

I have taken trazadone and nortryiptiline for non-anti-depressant properties, and *they* both caused mood problems. The notriptyline disrupted my equilibrium pretty quickly.

I don't think you can eliminate whole categories of drugs based on diagnosis alone, at least not SSRIs. There are many bipolar people on here on successfully using SSRIs as part of their cocktails. As usual, the standard of thumb is YMMV.