hi all,
i'm posting this both here and in the depression forums because i'm looking for all the support/advice/soothing i can get. forgive me for giving a bit of a lengthy background...
i'm a first year college student. i've been experiencing seasonal affective disorder symptoms for the last six years, and also dealt with significant anxiety in high school. i was always very good about hiding my problems, and finally managed to tell my clueless parents that i needed therapy 18 months ago. my therapist diagnosed me with SAD and generalized anxiety disorder. about a year ago, i was put on fluoxetine/prozac, which i was on when i stared college last fall. i hated being on prozac- i had always been against the idea of psych drugs, and while i was on it i had very surreal suicidal ideation, very different from what i had experienced in the past- instead of "i can't deal with this depression i need to kill myself" it was more like "it would be really interesting and lovely if i crashed my car right now, or jumped out this window." i stopped taking prozac. a month later, i became suicidal, made a plan, and was about to carry it out when i managed to seek help, and was hospitalized overnight. obsessed with the idea of 'keeping my life on track,' i managed to convince everyone that the best thing was to get me back in school, though i was really wishing that my parents/health professionals would realize that i needed to NOT be in school thousands of miles away, that i finally really needed HELP. my parents were relieved to think that my near death was a touch of adjustment disorder and were happy, albeit nervous, to send me back to school.
this semester started off very badly, though i've been in weekly therapy here. i felt extremely isolated, was always agitated and nervous, and had panic attacks or crying breakdowns every day. i began cutting, which i had done periodically over the past four years, but hadn't done for over 18 months. then i went home for spring break. there, i saw the psychiatrist who i'd met only once, who had cleared me to return to college after my episode of suicidality. i told him that i'd been having extremely bad anxiety, and he gave me klonopin, then xanax. i spent the two weeks i was home tranqed out of my head, very calm and very sad. i realized this was not a good solution so he put me on an SSRI, lexapro, which was a big deal because my parents are very against the idea of my being on antidepressants- my dad is still convined that it was my fault that i was suicidal because i stopped taking prozac too fast. anyway, the lexapro was going great for a few weeks, until last week i suddenly became depressed and started cutting again. i got away to a friend's house for the weeknd, but on sunday night i came back, immediately became very overwhelmed and anxious, and hurt myself quite badly, leading to an anxiety episode lasting hours that was not controlled by a xanax/klonopin double dose and left me unable to breath and almost unconscious with anxiety. last night was a similar story, so i left a message with my therapist. she called me today and asked me to call my psychiatrist. after talking for about 2 minutes, he decided to put me on quetiapine/seroquel.
this is why im so freaked now: seroquel is an antipsychotic! i'm not psychotic! im just so scared at the idea of being on all these different medications and not knowing how they interact or what i can be doing to get better and i just want to be a normal college kid but some days i cant even get out of bed and i dont want to give up and go home when the end of the semester is so near and i would lose so much credit but isn't my health more important anyway? but god i just want to be better and it would be lovely to pretend everything was normal if it werent for these 16 beautiful new gashes on my legs... oh and this week i told my mother that ive been cutting intermittently for 4 years, and shes in shock, so i have that to deal with. i guess i'm just looking for some support with this situation... any college kids that have struggled with depression/anxiety? any thoughts on lexapro or seroquel? advice for dealing with the somewhat flaky psychiatrist? how to manage to go to class and interact with people and try to breathe and get through every day? thanks all.