When Medications Dont Help

hi BratCat,

these maladies are neurochemical in nature and, as such, homeopathic remedies tend not to be very effective. Taking these types of med in adolescence is much much different than taking them in adulthood. I would suggest consulting with a psychiatrist and giving him/her your history with this. You may still not opt to go on medication but things are very different these days with the technologies.

having said all that, there are lots of coping techniques you can explore and personalize to perhaps mitigate the severity of your symptoms. I will sound like a total granola head but there's biofeedback, yoga, breathing exercises and training, meditation etc....

my husband suffers from depressive disorder and has been successfully medicated for almost 16 year after a suicidal ideation admission. I know the thought of being on this sort of medicine for a lifetime, especially given your history, can be daunting but it can also be so very beneficial in improving your quality of life. think about it this way....if you were a diabetic would you deny yourself insulin? It's really no different. I say seek professional help and explore all your options before thinking about unregulated and potentially negative "natural" remedies.

I say all of this with due respect and wish you well on your journey. S.

Obviously those who suggest nature and exercise have only suffered from very mild, temporary forms of anxiety and/or depression.
What helped my daughter was a wonderful therapist, whom she saw weekly for about a year.
Medications are still an option, I mean they are always changing and coming out with new ones, but really,why haven't you tried seeing a therapist? That might REALLY help.

Get a full blood work up. If you are low in certain hormones or vitamins, it can have a huge effect on your body.

And it's very true that your adult body will probably respond differently to medication than your adolescent/young adult body. Hormones fluctuate SO much during those years.

Depression is neurochemical. It can be impacted by chemical/mineral imbalances in the body or it can be it's own thing. I'd find a doctor to help with that.

Also, a good psychologist and talk therapy could help as well. Exercise, yoga, etc. can help too. Perhaps a combination might work best for you.

Take care!

A friend of mine says that the medications she's on now were not available to her as a young adult. I suggest you return to therapy and re-evaluate your needs and how much behavior modification therapies can help you and what new medications are available to you. You might also seek an entirely new doctor, perhaps one that specializes in anxiety. I've watched relatives go to their GP who just kind of throw stuff at the wall vs really evaluates their specific symptoms and tailors something to them. Find someone who specializes in your specific concerns and who can support medication with other therapies. Your GP can rule out conditions like thyroid problems, but shouldn't be the source of your depression and anxiety medications, IMO.

In my opinion, no medication or remedy alone will fix depression and anxiety. A person with those conditions needs to work with a mental health specialist to get a clear understanding of what exactly is going on, what might be the causes, and what avenues to explore first to treat it. I'm not saying that talk therapy (or cognitive behavior or whatever) will cure you, just that I don't think anyone, especially someone who is struggling with depression/anxiety, can figure out on their own how to treat it. Start by asking your medical person (doctor, nurse, whatever) to refer you to someone, or start with a clergy person if you participate in a faith. Wishing you lots of luck with the process!

Believe it or not exercise and sunshine are the best antidepressants on the market.

My son had trouble with anxiety for awhile and L-theanine helped him. It's a natural remedy that you can get at CVS. We talked to the doctor about it and he said it was fine to try. There may be drug interaction concerns depending on anything you may be taking, so I would ask your doctor about it, but it may be worth trying.

ETA: I agree with the others. My son was working with a medical doctor and a therapist. I doubt the L-theanine would have worked on it's own.

Depression and anxiety can be as physical a problem as diabetes or migraine headaches. Sometimes medication is needed.

However, with nearly every disease or condition that you can name or think of (acne, cancer, stomach aches, constipation, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, toe nail fungus - whether the disease or condition is debilitating or just slightly annoying), there are lifestyle changes and improvements that can help. Most specialized hospitals (that treat cancer, or spinal cord injuries, or serious diseases) don't just have doctors. They have pet therapies (where patients get visited by a dog or ride a horse). They have nutritionists. They have activities, like art and exercise and outings. These are not for entertainment, but are a part of the overall wellbeing and healing plan.

So, what is your life like? Do you have a supportive and loving family or partner? What's your job or school or your normal day like?

How about your eating habits? Are you downing energy drinks (with artificial junk and food coloring and tons of caffeine and questionable ingredients)? Are you swinging through McDonalds every evening, and is your breakfast a purple pop-tart and a diet soda? Do you drink too much caffeine or alcohol? Is supper thrown together from cans and boxes? It doesn't have to look like the cover of Food and Wine magazine, but even a simple salad with olive oil and vinegar, with a little chicken on it, is better than a boxed mix of junk.

Do you exercise or go for walks, or do you just sit in the dark with your phone or tablet? Do you turn off the electronics well before bedtime and get enough sleep?

Do you have a belief system that sustains you (like a belief in God, or a church or synagogue or mosque or other house of worship, or prayer, or meditation or whatever) and are you connected to others with whom you can fellowship or pray or commune or talk?

Start by evaluating your day. Is your morning usually filled with smiles, a breakfast of berries and Greek yogurt or sprouted grain toast or oatmeal with raw local honey, clean clothes to put on so you can go to a job you enjoy or take care of kids or whatever it is that you do? Or is it chaos and misery, after a sleepless night, and no time for protein so you'll grab a doughnut later? Of course, in the most well-ordered life there will be days where nothing goes right, but that should be the exception, not the rule. There will be vomiting children, a grumpy partner, a job loss, a broken zipper or heel as you're walking out the door, a forgotten file folder, but put into perspective, they're not the end of the world.

Keep a food journal and a sleep journal. If you're doing all the best things you can for yourself, such as eating whole foods, not devouring sweets and artificial sweeteners, drinking lots of water, sleeping well, enjoying your family and friends, then perhaps a new anti-depressant might be helpful. But if you're smoking and drinking and staying out until 3 am and fighting with everyone and hating your job and eating buckets full of fried chicken and a package of cookies every night, then an anti-depressant isn't going to really help.

Medications build up in your system. Your body gets used to them. The docs have to increase the amount of medication until they reach a therapeutic level. Then you should be able to stay on that amount for an extended amount of time. If your therapeutic dose is at the top of that medication amount then they can't increase it anymore. That's when you have to change to another med.

It is a continuous cycle.

I'd like to suggest, from my own experience, that therapy and facing the demons that are causing the anxiety will make it go away. I had panic attacks in traffic at stop lights. I had panic attacks in church and college classrooms if I wasn't sitting by the door so I could make a quick escape. I had panic attacks on public transportation because I was trapped, if I got off I'd be all alone and in a strange place so I had to stay on the bus...

It got crazy, very very controlling of my life.

I went to therapy for a long time and finally had a therapist that would confront me. She would catch me unaware and pounce with a question that would make me shake and cry. But by doing that we figured out what was going on and I got better.

I do not have panic attacks anymore. I don't have anxiety attacks anymore. Do I have some avoidance behaviors? Sure. I still sit close to a door so I feel able to get up and leave. I can be in traffic though, that's a big one. I don't have to be the first one in line in case I need to escape being trapped anymore.

I can function in a mostly normal way.

Since being better with those things I am overall less sad and depressed. I have environmental depression. Meaning, for my purpose, that things in my environment cause me to feel depressed. On a normal day I feel fine and pretty okay, not sad. When my house is cluttered and trash is piling up from others not doing chores or the laundry room is piled up because someone needs clean clothes and they haven't cleaned their room or figured out what a hamper is for, those things make me angry and I repress those feelings and it turns into depression.

If I deal up front, out in the open, with things that make me angry, I am not mad and there isn't anything to repress so I feel no depression.

IF you have a biological issue then you will need to treat depression as a biological component of your life. It's not hard if you recognize what it is, treat it like you would if you were an epileptic or had diabetes, a medical imbalance that causes you problems but with care you can manage fine.

I sympathize with you - I battled depression for many years and I know the frustration of trying different things, have dosages adjusted and so on. I didn't have the anxiety portion of it, but I work with plenty of people who have had that. I've had extremely good results using a combination of things, but I strongly caution you not to just grab something because it says "natural" on it! Lots of things are "natural" that aren't good for you at all - snake venom, arsenic, bella donna, poison ivy.... And don't just grab something at CVS or the "health food" store - the recent reports about all the mislabeling and (perhaps) fraud at places like Whole Foods and GNC should scare you about that. Many of those products didn't even contain what the label said they did! Maybe the stores don't package those materials, but they are absolutely responsible for not verifying what their suppliers were sending them.

Even if a product is what it says on the label (a patent is one way to verify that), that doesn't mean that you can create your own dosage - single ingredient products don't have the balance that you need from multiple ingredients, and overdoses or excesses are possible.

"All Natural" isn't the only way to go either - things made in a lab under controlled conditions that mimic natural products are under much greater supervision. Drugs are "approved" by the FDA, but food-based products are supervised but not technically "approved". But a company can get a Good Manufacturing Practices certification from the FDA. So you might do better thinking of "over-the-counter" products vs. prescriptions, rather than "natural".

It's best to work with someone who knows what they are doing in terms of balanced formulas - a company with a strong food science basis that uses independent clinical studies (not their own) and certificates of analysis on ingredients from suppliers. There's more to this - you can message me if you want more info, but if you have anxiety I don't want to overwhelm you with a long answer here.

In my experience, working with talk therapy, as Anne L. has said and others are saying, is really a key to your recovery. These products can help, but they aren't usually enough on their own, particularly if you are mixing and matching ingredients on your own. I work in food science, and have seen many successes. But I have already seen a good friend land herself in the hospital by overloading on valerian root and St. John's Wort and some other things she thought were safe because they said "all natural". So don't go that route on your own. You can create more problems.

Please reach out for help from a qualified therapist - you can use a social worker or a psychologist who doesn't work with prescriptions. Your primary care physician can help you find someone who takes your insurance and who is properly certified. There are plenty of people out there who just hang up a shingle from an official-sounding degree program who aren't legitimate.

Good luck - don't stop reaching out for help.

Nature is the best natural remedy. Get out and go for walks in the sun. Go hiking, camping and just unplug.

It depends. Have you been diagnosed with a mental illness? I understand it's a royal pain in the butt to get your meds straightened out. It can take years. But if you have a chemical imbalance then exercise, almonds, aromatherapy, meditation, etc. ain't gonna cut it. If you have a diagnosis, find a good psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner and go from there.

My friend says a handful of cashews is calming because something natural in the cashew. I eat cashews all the time and don't feel one way or another. I just like cashews. I believe in sunshine and exercise, however, am very aware that sometimes meds are necessary.

I would say therapy would be your very best bet.

I think you've gotten a lot of good advice so far.

I think it is so important to work with a professional for both the medicine and talk therapy.

Joan Mathews Larson is someone who has researched homeopathic/ nutritional ways to battle depression. She specifies what tests your doctor should do, how an imbalance in hormones (cortisone, etc) plays a role and even did some mild research on how age and ethnicity can effect the body and mental health issues.

It's best to discuss her information with the professional you work with.

I hope you find something that helps.

ETA: There seems to be a bit more commercializing of her research now.
It is something to look into, but I would definitely discuss the research with a professional.

I've read about walnuts, and when I eat them I do get a burst. Try a few a day.

Well there's always St. John's Wort, Saffron, Zinc and Cannabis. Make sure you research and talk to a medical professional.

Hi momma, First I would talk with a Dr. I was depressed after I lost my child and I did find natural supplements that helped. I do my shopping through a wellness store that has natural supplements. I took a anxiety/depression supplement and Omega 3 (fish oil pill) helps with eyes, heart and brain.-make sure its soluble. I didnt feel as foggy/clouded if that makes sense. Helped me remember better and gave me more energy. Didnt cure anything, only time helped with that but it allowed me to get out of bed and do my daily routine. Feel free to contact me if you would like more info on this store. I would also look into certain foods that can help as well.