Just got off phone to my mum, who is early eighties.
She has had episodes of horrible, severe depression throughout her adult life. They tend to be short but sharp, lasting 8-12 weeks before getting better. She is on duloxetine and has been for ages, has previously tried other ADs and none of them actively prevent these episodes. They’ve played around with dosage, type etc. No dice.
She’s currently in a depressive episode.
Diagnosis has always been unipolar major depressive disorder.
But both she and I wonder if something else is going on. TFT is normal, full blood count generally also comes back normal.
This current episode coincides with her being in lots of pain with her back (from osteoporosis) but previous similar episodes have not followed pain flares and appear to have no obvious physical or psychological trigger. They don’t occur in autumn/ winter only so unlikely to be SAD. The last two have happened almost to the day at the same time of year (July onset)
the other very odd thing is that each time before one of the depressive episodes, she experiences heightened sense of smell.
That is particularly odd to me.
i have wondered about all kinds of things, ranging from vitamin B deficiencies, Lyme Disease, and some less extreme version of bipolar.
Does anyone have any ideas that could help her? It’s so unfair she has to go through this and all approaches so far have failed to prevent recurrence :(