I came upon a very important website.
The content is quite rich; however, below I've provided an excerpt from it that may suggest that some drug therapies for depression may in fact exacerbate your depressive condition, (assuming you were not diagnosed correctly.)
If you are diagnosed as “depressed", it may very well be you may have bipolar II that show more depressive tendencies than manic ones.
A good intentioned doctor and or even a psychiatrist may have made an error in diagnoses and your treatment may actually be more harmful, than helpful.
There are allot of details and would suggest to those affected a good read.
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Principle C: Beware of Antidepressants
This principle is not agreed upon by all mood experts. More details about the role of antidepressants in bipolar disorder treatment, including links to relevant articles that form the basis of the views expressed below, and a summary of an alternative point of view, can be found on the Antidepressant Controversies page.
First, here are the generally agreed upon risks of antidepressants. Even these, however, are somewhat controversial because some doctors think they are not so common; and some think that if they occur, then one simply treats them and continues the antidepressant.
Antidepressants can cause "rapid cycling". Technically this means more than 4 mood episodes per year, of any type (depressed or manic or mixed), but cycles can be as often as every day or few days and a few people can go even faster, so-called "ultradian (more than one per day) cycling".
Antidepressants can cause hypomanic or manic symptoms (sometimes called "switching", meaning from depressed to manic). Overall, this is thought to occur between 20 and 40% of the time when a depressed patient with bipolar disorder is given an antidepressant. Though one review found much smaller percentages, the first study dedicated to looking for this rate came out with a switch rate of 20-30% in the first 10 weeks.Leverich
Antidepressants can cause "mixed states". Remember, bipolar disorder is not like the north and south pole; hypo/manic symptoms can occur while depressed symptoms are also present. In a way, this is the same problem as #2 above, except that instead of switching from one state to another, you have both at the same time. Usually this looks like agitation or anxiety, or irritability; and difficulty sleeping; and depression, all at the same time.
Secondly, here are the more controversial risks.
Antidepressants appear to cause "mood destabilizing" -- increasing cycle frequency over a longer period of time; in other words, having more mood episodes than before, or more rapid switches from one mood state to another. This is regarded as worsening the mood condition overall, making it less stable. This is one of the main concerns expressed by one of the lead experts on this issue, Dr. Ghaemi, whose work is cited extensively in the Antidepressant Controversies essay.
Finally, could antidepressants cause "kindling", in which the illness worsens more quickly with time than it might have if antidepressants weren't there? I don't hear other experts fretting about this as I do, so I won't worry you with it here. If you'd like to hear some more of my concerns, there is a section on "kindling" on the AD controversy page.
Whatever you do with antidepressants, you really need to work closely with your doctor on this. DO NOT STOP your antidepressant; it must be tapered at minimum, if you're going off, or you could -- for sure, I'm not making this up -- actually end up quickly worse. You have to plan this out with your doctor. If you have trouble getting your concerns or ideas heard, here are some ideas on talking with doctors.
Meanwhile, however, the good news is that we have at least nine different ways of treating depression in bipolar disorder, without using antidepressants. These are summarized on the page entitled Antidepressants That Aren't "Antidepressants".