The Kaleidoscope World of Psychotic Depression
Seeing flying purple elephants, dead people and talking objects, these are some of the side effects of psychotic depression. Entertaining, as it may seem, having psychotic depression is a very serious condition. It is a type of depression that is accompanied with delusions, which are irrational thoughts and fears and hallucinations, in which you see and hear nonexistent things
However, there are also other types of depression that is accompanied with hallucinations. The difference is that people with psychotic depression know that their thoughts are not true.
Seeing the Signs And Wonders
The common symptoms of psychotic depression are anxiety, hypochondria, and agitation. You can also have difficulty sleeping and develop insomnia. There are times in which you become sedentary. You also tend to have digestion problems, especially constipation. Your cognitive skills are also affected greatly to the point of impairment.
Then you start having hallucinations where you start seeing surreal things like flying objects and talking nonliving things. You also develop delusional thoughts, like paranoia and other unreasonable fears.
Cause
The cause of psychotic depression is not yet identified but research show that it is linked to a certain hormone named Cortical; which your body produces in large volumes especially when you are stressed out. Unlike other kinds of depression there are no specific risk factors for the incidence of psychotic depression.
Treatment
When you are being treated for psychotic depression, it would require you for a long hospital stay. You also have to undergo close check-ups and follow-ups with a mental healthcare professional.
An antidepressant drugs alone are not enough to treat this kind of depression. Usually, a combination use of antipsychotic medications and tricyclic antidepressants work best for treatment. For those cases with bipolar disorder, lithium is added to the drugs to reach optimal results.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is often a last resort, which is used to treat extreme cases. Although this kind of therapy has good results, it is never used without due consideration. The whole treatment process should be administered and done by a trained professional, usually a psychiatrist.
It usually takes up a year for a psychotic depressive patient to recover. The psychotic symptoms may not return any more after you are treated, but you can still have some visitations from the symptoms of depression. That's why it is very important to have regular check-ups even after treatment, and continued medication for depression if your doctor advises you to do so.
