Do antidepressants work?

It sure does.

I never wanted to be on medication but ended up with little choice. It was hard to know if they were working. This also went for certain talking therapies. I could never quite put my finger on it but now I can. My "problems" felt different to other people's representations of anxiety or depression. It sounds like we both have more awareness in moving forward. So while we can't stop things from happening, we know how we would better deal with it or what to expect. That is definitely progress.

Peace out.

Anti-depressants are a personal thing. You will experience different effects from others when taking them.

I have been on anti-depressants on and off from early teen years. I have tried every single anti-depressant, beta-blocker or anxiety med available to limited success. In the absolute depths of depression I find they lift my mood for around 6 months then stop working. At that point the side effects are tolerable because the symptoms are so bad. But then when I come out of the depression and I am dealing with anxiety they really don't help, many times it makes it worse. I also couldn't sleep properly, think clearly, have sex with my partner or even enjoy things by myself and hit a period of feeling completely dissociated. At this point I always come off them slowly and deal with the withdrawal for a while before trying to cope on my own. I don't do that very well either so I can't say if they are/aren't the best option. Therapy is so tricky for me because I only think in pictures and 'film', I have no internal monologue at all so it's hard to identify negative thinking until it has physical manifestations. For this reason it is also harder to tell if I am doing better on the anti-depressants too.

Maybe you could keep a daily score of how you feel you are doing that day 1-10 then you can see how it is changing over time. The way I measured it was through productivity. How well was I keeping up with tasks at work and getting things done. How much was I having meltdowns, etc. It's a tricky situation when you never know how you feel!

Yes, it is.

For me, it wasn't SSRI's I was on, but barrel loads of booze.  Like you, I knew that the booze was not helping my core underlying problem, but it did help me cope with the "confusion of what the hell was going on"(to use your wise words.)

Now I do understand what the hell is going on, it is still a bit tripy and confusing at times, but because I now understand WHY I feel that way, I seem to have very little problem in dealing with it without the need to drown my confusion.

I think that this is all progress......so whilst it is strange looking back.....it reinforces how far I have progressed in a relatively short time since understanding what my autism means for me and my life.

Positivity reigns (most of the time.) 

It's quite strange looking back!

out_of_step said:

when in the depths of burnout I would not have been able to tell you how I was feeling and this added to the confusion of what the hell was going on. It might have looked like depression on the surface but it didn't feel that way but I couldn't explain this

Wise words indeed.

ive never taken them but i have been tempted to go to the gp a few times and ask but id rather not as the glaring thing putting me off is the side effects.... i saw a super model really  good looking woman take antidepressants and in just 1 week she gained like 10 stone of weight and ruined her life off them... yeah im not touching that stuff lol

vodka works to make me feel normal, but depression i have no answer for.

Tulip52 said:

I have been prescribed different ones over the past 40 years, and still struggled, and i didnt know i was autustic. I now realise that some of those visits to the doctor, saying i cant cope, where in fact melt downs. Antidepressants didnt help me my melt downs. 

Likewise, over 30 years of different antidepressants (tricyclics, SSRIs and SNRIs) with varying effects from nothing to debilitating side-effects to some efficacy and a recent autism diagnosis from GP. I have definitely suffered severe depression, PTSD and anxiety due to traumatic life events, and while dealing with these an antidepressant and counselling helped.

However there are many times when I have been unable to cope, to the point of being sectioned,  which I would now ascribe to burnouts. At these times, antidepressants had no, or only minor, effects, and frequently severe side-effects (e.g. unable to stand due to dizziness). 

Ladybug5 said:

am I just finding it harder to tell if I’m doing better because I can’t identify may own emotions as easily?

Totally relate to this too. I learnt to say an appropriate emotion through counselling, but I am not sure I feel it, except when I get desperately low, which I recognise because of the paths my thoughts follow.

I do think that autistic burnouts and depression can feed each other in a vicious circle and that for some, a shortish course of antidepressants might help break this, but we are still left with identifying and dealing with burnouts. What if the best we can hope for is a sort of flat, stable effect for the rest of the time?

I now have bad post-menopausal symptoms which HRT improves only marginally to throw into the mix. I am not sure a male psychiatrist, a young female mental health care coordinator and a male support worker (all NT) quite get my issues. My overworked older female GP seems to, but is not the appropriate person to talk to or to prescribe. Massive waiting lists for autism and for gynecology referrals.

I think I am probably feeling tired (I am getting poor and broken sleep), frustrated (I don't think I can find someone who will treat me holistically) and depressed (bouts of crying, negative thoughts). It is so hard working this out, then trying to understand other people, I am exhausted (burnout).

I think antidepressants can help, sometimes, but it is trickier for us- many autistic people already struggle to identify our feelings and there's so much misdiagnosis going on that lots of us are inappropriately medicated for anxiety and/or depression that's really signs of an autistic person in distress.

I was on sertraline for a few years up until the end of last year and did find it helpful to some extent- I came off it due to improvements in my physical health and work environment but that happened to coincide with the realisation that I was autistic. I'm going to go back on them for a while to get me through the worst of the grief from a recent bereavement, and I suspect I'll be on and off them all my life, but I don't think I'm going to need them all the time. I do think they're probably going to be more effective for me from now on, now that I know which of my feelings/reactions/behaviours are autistic things not needing medication and which really are the anxiety.

I think autism can affect our mood for reasons like isolation, frustration, overwhelm, relationships, etc. For me, knowing now that i am autistic, i feel like i dont have to battle anymore, and if i feel low, i just rest until it passes. One of the biggest things that i have learnt about my mood is that it passes. When i was young, i didn't know it would, and i would catastrophise, but now i recognise it and acknowledge it, and it passes. Its not nice of course when it happens, but it passes. 

And these spells of sadness  low mood  depression etc. fior me still ocvur while taking antidepressants. I have decided some time ago that i no longer want to take them, i want to get to know the real me and try without them. It may be that i will need to take them but i want to try.

From experience i dont reccomend stopping the antidepressants abruptly. This should be done very gradually. It is becoming more apparent recently that stopping antidepressants should be done gradually, as it can cause withdrawal effects if stopped abruptly or too fast. X

I wish I knew I was autistic sooner too..

yes I agree it’s hard to separate the autism from depression. I think I can still be quite sure I’ve experienced depression but it’s difficult to separate the symptoms.

I have very strong views on the use of antidepressants.

I have been prescribed different ones over the past 40 years, and still struggled, and i didnt know i was autustic. I now realise that some of those visits to the doctor, saying i cant cope, where in fact melt downs. Antidepressants didnt help me my melt downs. 

I suffer with terrible brain fog and have done for the past approx 25 years. 

I wish i had known all those years ago that i was autistic. I feel sad for the young me who didnt know what was going on. 

Most antidepressants come with side effects and it can be very difficult to come off them 

I would start by asking myself why am i depressed? Am i depressed or tired? I am begining to think that depression has a cause. For example lifestyle, relationships, loss, bereavement etc.

There is no scientific evidence to support the low serotonin theory. 

My conclusion, and it is still early days, and im still learning, is that i am not depressed  im autistic x

I’ve been prescribed citalopram in the past, the GP explained that I most probably had a chemical imbalance in my brain, I didn’t produce enough serotonin. I was in my forties then and had been struggling with depression since I was a child, I stopped taking the citalopram in the end, I had felt no better. My old GP retired in the end and a new young GP replaced him, on our first meeting I was referred for an autism assessment. It has led to a burnout for over a year but that’s mainly me processing my past life and not masking so much. Knowing why has helped me more than medication, it just all became very clear. The depression still exists along with anxiety but knowing why allows me to adapt my life and be a much better person.

I’ve had the doctors attempt to prescribe antidepressants to me on and off for the past 20 years, sadly I don’t believe they’d help symptoms of autism burnout (but I could be wrong). Most recently around 6 months ago I was actually prescribed some for the first time ever, however took the decision not to begin taking them. I wish I had more faith in them and felt they could benefit us.

I was prescribed antidepressants and in the night was horrendous like a zombie. The GP didn't do a follow up call. 

Ladybug5 said:

am I just finding it harder to tell if I’m doing better because I can’t identify may own emotions as easily?

This is a very common symptom of autism so don't worry about this one. It is best to accept that is could be there rather than worry about it as well.

There is a commonly used approach to being able to identify your emotions - there is something called the Emotions Wheel which is very useful in this case:

https://positivepsychology.com/emotion-wheel/

You can download the image of the wheel to use on your phone or computer and there is no need to buy books about it - the principle is fairly straightforward.

As for worrying about the assessment - don't think about it too much. Think about what you will ask after it is done and split this into two sections - 1 for if you are autistic and 2 for it you aren't.

Write these down and add to them as you remember stuff as it will help keep your mind from spinning when it is trying to remember the details.

The foggy feeling is almost certainly the antidepressants and you can ask your GP to adjust the medication to find the least fog inducing ones for you.