Antidepressants for grief

[Sooz49]

I would really appreciate anyone's advice on whether it is worth taking antidepressants to help with grief. I lost my dad a few months back and my mum 5 years ago and have also to sell the family home I grew up in. I live abroad and am not coping at all well and am spiralling into depression.I have developed anxiety and a lack of trust but have never had these feelings before. I am also going to see a counsellor next week. My relationship with my husband is suffering because I am suffering. I just want to be able to function properly again. Any suggestions would be useful. I have never taken antidepressants before.

I would advise you to try taking a low dose (10mg) and see how it goes. You are coping with a lot at the moment . The ADs may help clarify your thinking and help ypou to cope rationise things. They did for me .
Good luck.

Thank you for that advice. Rationalising things would be a really good start. I appreciate it.

Sorry for your losses and the difficult situation you are in .
Think about using anti depressants like you would use pain medicine and crutches for a broken leg. They won’t make ‘everything better’, they won’t make your broken leg heal more quickly, but they can help you to function better in the time it takes for your broken leg to heal IYSWIM.

Sorry for your loss. I was offered ADs for grief but i refused them. To me grief isn't depression and masking it will make it worse in the long run. Counselling and excersise helped me. I am not cured and still have some very dark days but i am working through it.
For me i wouldn't do it but only you can know what might benefit you, if you have tried other avenues first then it might be worth ago, as a last resort.

I’m sorry to hear you’re suffering so much, grief can be so profound. You can get ‘stuck’ in it, it is a process, although different for everyone. It might help you to talk about it with a grief councillor if that’s possible so you can understand what’s happening for you.
Whilst antidepressants can help with mood you might find that you’re delaying the next stage, and pushing your feelings away might mean it comes back at a later stage of your life. The grief councillor should be able to shed some light on whether your grief has become an episode of depression, for which anti-d’s might be helpful.
I hope you can find some support and relief from your sadness. If you can, be as kind to yourself as possible eat, sleep, exercise, spend time with sympathetic friends.

Thank you..all of you. Yes, grief is so profound. It's such a horrible process to go through and I am desperate for people to understand me. None of my friends have lost two parents, so I am looking for support somewhere and yes, will definitely go to a counsellor.

My DH is currently on ADs (for anxiety rather than depression) following the death of his brother last year from suicide. His dad and brother separately were prescribed them around the same time too.

Sometimes you need some extra help. Sorry for your losses.

My mother died 5 months ago after a short but scary and exhausting time. I was worn out, grieving and coping with everything alone apart from dh and dd, and I decided I need a short term release, so got a 14 day prescription of 2mg diazepam. It gave me a bit of space to relax and recover. Not saying it's right for everyone but it certainly helped.

I starting taking sertraline after a bereavement as I had just stopped functioning.
They helped a lot, started low and built up to - higher dose.
Two years on, and I’m off them now and living fairly normally.

I would recommend antidepressants in your case. Depression is actually one of the stages of bereavement and so antidepressant use is very common.

We used to distinguish between exogenous depression (caused by outside factors) and endogenous depression (caused by chemical imbalance) and think that exogenous depression didn't need treatment.

Now we treat both exactly the same as it's been shown that living with something that causes you to feel depressed for a long period actually changes the brains chemicals in the same way that endogenous depression does. After a while you cannot tell exogenous and endogenous depression apart on a chemical level so both will respond well to antidepressants.

As a PP said, it won't change what's happened, but it will restore your brain chemicals to normal levels which will help you to process things better and to function more normally

I think the anxiety that comes with big grief can be crippling and frightening. I remember I started to panic at night after my mum died. That more than the grief made me feel out of control. If anti depressants can help calm you I would say worth a try. Grief needs to come out. It won't be constant but it will peak and trough and take a while for you to process what's happened and adjust to, then accept the new reality.

A good friend of mine, a GP, is very against medicating grief. She says that grief is a normal, human emotion and it's completely natural to grieve for a loved one.

Have you have bereavement counselling?

So many good responses. Am still at a loss what to do though! I will try bereavement counselling and ask them also,

I think seeing a councillor is actually more than enough to be getting on with, no one should be expecting you to know what to do. At the moment you can just ‘be’. Xx

Hi OP, I'm sorry for your loss . I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this. I actually came off Sertraline when by DB died, because I was worried that I wasn't experiencing the grief I need to feel, but I had been on them for a year, for other reasons anyway. If you're feeling stuck they might get you over the hump, and you could then decide what to do. IME anti-depressants are not addictive, and coming off them was OK.

Thanks - I was worried about the addictive side of things. There's a lot of other things going on in my life too and I think without this help I can see myself in a complete mess....I don`t want things to get that far. Thanks for all your really useful responses xxx

I live overseas and my mum is nearing the end of her life with late stage cancer. I was crying every day and I got anti depressants and they have really helped me to not cry, think rationally, and not obsess over feeling like I should be closer to her and why did I move overseas without thinking it through that one day my parents would get old.
I feel for you- it is really hard for anyone and even harder when you are far away from your family.

I am so sorry to hear that - I know how hard that is not being able to be physically close to a parent when they are sick. Spend as much time as you can if possible and make it good quality time and then you will always be happy that you did that. Cancer can take hold so quickly at the end. Hugs xx

Hello there, I understand that it has been a while since this thread has been active but maybe worth my input.
I think ADs can really really work and make significant differences. I do believe that it if you are happy to stay on them long term, great! Lots of people do so, successfully!
However, if you are thinking of taking them short term, I’d insure that it is short term.

For example there are two different ways that could be be causing you problems
(such as anxiousness and/or low mood and negative thinking which is impacting your day to day..)
either outside factors/circumstantial or chemically, things are not optimal, for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter.

If you’re going through grief and you would like to start, I’d advise that only take if you really feel like you’re going down a hole and only take until you feel that your feet are back on the ground and you’re back to how you were prior to the loss.

Sending you so much love and do not fret as it will pass. The darkness will pass and love will prevail. It might just take a little longer than we have patience for, which is where the ADs come in hand!

🤗