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Hypomania with antidepressants
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I have read that bipolars who take antidepressants can be kicked into (hypo)mania within the first two weeks of medicating, does this happen ONLY to bipolars? Dear Joshua -- However, here's a different way of looking at it I like better.
As I've tried to explain on my website about bipolar II, these questions
should be thought of as a matter of degree, not yes or no.
My guess would be that someone who shows a little hypomania
when given an antidepressant, has some low degree of risk and probably
would show some subtle "hypomania" signs even off the medication: perhaps
not enough to warrant treatment with a mood stabilizer, but perhaps enough
to warrant avoiding antidepressants except exercise or lithium. Yes,
as I think about it, I like this system:
And finally in the more-than-you-wanted-to-know process: many people with a clear bipolar diagnosis report that the first few antidepressants they took, e.g. including Prozac, worked "really well" -- and that sometimes it took years for them to start to show obvious increases in hypomanic symptoms due to antidepressants. Dr. Phelps |