Thinking about help

Do you have an Employee Assistance Program? If so, that's the best place to start.

 

Not personally, but a very close family member began a therapy journey using betterhelp.com. It was once/week, with reassessment every 4 weeks to see if the match for patient/therapist was working. Very oriented toward goals the patient set. In this instance, it led my family member to find the courage to seek local help by someone who could be seen in person and prescribe medication if warranted. Maybe like starting at a JUCO before going full-on university. I'd say they used better help for about 2 1/2 months and found useful social tools through this therapy.

 

This is the best advice. You are not going to find a psychiatrist or therapist within 4 weeks unless you are lucky.

Go to ER if you have to. Those are the first words on a psychiatrist's voicemail message.

Go to a primary as soon as possible. He/she can proscribe you and start the process of referring you.

If you need longer term help, you can take a medical leave and do something like in-patient or partial hospitalization.

@UNCGrad

 

Be careful with this. A GP can indeed write you a script, but unless they are very carefully monitoring, things can go very wrong very fast. I spent a week or two on Klonopin going this route and it very nearly cost me everything.

 

This.

Meds need to be prescribed by the proper medical professionals. As @dixiehack notes the side effects and efficacy vary from person to person.

A GP can write a script for an antibiotic, above that go to the next level of prescribers.

 

Wow. I was thinking Lexapro.
I had a good GP. After a few months she wouldn't go further with my meds.

 

I get to follow my own advice it turns out. Because anti-inflammation meds have wrecked my esophagus, my rheumatologist is putting me on Cymbalta, which is also an anti-depressant. Already talked to a close friend in town who knows my back story and gave her permission to bug me all month to make sure I’m adjusting OK.

 

Cymbalta's commercials, like the rest of the new era pharma commercials, are frightening when you actually listen to the warnings of side effects.

 

I took cymbalta for a year about a decade ago. I had good results with it, but make sure when you are finished taking it your doctor allows you to be weaned off of it. I mean I was breaking my pills open and counting beads to gradually reduce. There's a side effect that people call the brain zaps when you're coming off it. I did not have them very badly and they really didn't bother me. I called them brain wawas.

 

Yes he mentioned that if and when I came off it would have to be gradual weaning.

 

So I'm back to the velvet underground
Back to the floor that I love

Been a decade since I’ve seen a psychiatrist, and I can’t say I’ve missed it. But I’ve been in a deepening funk since Labor Day and the last 6-8 weeks have gone from rolling downhill to what feels like a near vertical plunge.

I’m booked for a telehealth appointment next Tuesday. This was actually my second attempt, as the first practice I was going to use declined to see me unless I switched my primary care over to them as well. So I’ve had to fill out my complete psychiatric history twice since Sunday afternoon - once on paper and once on a 6-part web questionnaire. If I didn’t need a shrink before I do after that wringer.

 

I know this doesn’t work for your situation, but I wish more practices tied in primary care with mental health care. You rarely see it here. Everything I’m reading has praised the benefits of coordinated care. I also understand not wanting to ditch a long-standing GP.

Good luck, dixie, those prolonged funks suck and they’re a real mind fuck.