Major depression with psychotic elements/ Psychotic depression

[Ecdysis]

So, 8 years ago, I suddenly developed really severe depression and I think maybe why I can't even do basic things like have a conversation is cos it's depression with psychotic elements… I've worried it might be this for a while and had a psychiatric evaluation recently for my disability allowance and in the results they indicated that they thought it may be a psychotic depression… I'm kind of freaked out about it, what it means, what treatment may involve, etc... but also relieved that it may explain why my depression has been so severe and so treatment resistant…

Psychotic Depression: What Is It, Symptoms, Causes, and More

Learn about the causes and symptoms of psychotic depression and how the disorder is treated.

www.healthline.com

Does anyone have experience with this?

I'm not having hallucinations (tho dissociation is really severe).

I'm having what's called "Major depressive disorder with mood-congruent psychotic features. Hallucinations and delusions reflect feelings and emotions that often show up with depression, including feelings of personal inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt, and fears about illness or death."

I guess it's like the distorted thinking/ negative core beliefs that you get with depression, but just really extreme, where you believe them 100% and lose all sense of reality regarding these delusional core beliefs...?

It's often missed/ not diagnosed, cos it's hard for Dr's to tell whether it's "just" major depression or whether these kind of delusions are part of the mix...

 

[Survivor3]

Wow @Ecdysis , I just read pretty much all of the link and the diagnosis really describes what I was suffering from for decades. I have a history of complex trauma, recurrant depression and "apparently"!! Persistent delusional disorder. Very interesting

 

[SeekingAfrica]

I don't know honestly. It's confusing because a lot of what they describe can overlap with the feelings you get from childhood trauma as well, just to a bigger degree. I went over the major depressive disorder symptoms and I tick almost all of them.

However in the psychotic I relate to the same as you. I tend to have supper inflated sense of guilt and worthlessness etc to a point where it feels I'll never succeed nor deserve to. To a point where it makes me freeze. But also, I Don't believe it's to psychotic point. However if you feel yours is, suspect so for a while- you might be right, who knows. For what it's worth when I got PTSD I knew nothing about it and thought I was going crazy, then eventually suspected I have it for 3 years, before actually being diagnosed and then dealing with the other trauma from childhood.

Also for whatever it's worth, diagnosis is like anything else. You accept, adapt. PTSD felt like the world was ending at first. Like everything in your liferevolves around the diagnosis. Then you become yourself, just with PTSD to manage. And just like people manage any other diagnosis, you learn who to tell and how, what to do to manage exact symptoms and so on. And as far as diagnosis' go, it's far from the worst one. I believe in our ability as people and I believe in your strength to learn more about this and adapt if that is the diagnosis.

Hope I formulated this well and said things okay, I'm a bit more self-conscious these few days.

Thinking of you and sending hugs and strength .

 

[arfie]

i'm another who fits or has fit the descriptive, but not the diagnosis. at least, i don't think i do. i've never read any of my psych portfolios, so i don't rightly know what all is in there. most of my own psych evaluations were from the 20th century, so i'm fairly confident all the names have changed, anyway. in my own psychosis, doctor names for whatever ^it^ is ailing me this season tend to freak me out. do they make those names scary on purpose, or are they just showing off their academic superiority?

i get further focusing on managing the symptoms. does it really matter which big word is to blame for my symptoms? my focus is on staying calm and functional in spite of them.

off-topic?
one of my personal campaigns is to debunk the psych- words. how can psych, psycho, psychic, psychosis, psyche, psychology, psychotic, psychiatry, etc., all have such radically different meanings? they all have the same word root. mostly curious. what's up doc?

 

[Ecdysis]

Yeah, I agree that labels can seem arbitrary.

At the same time, they can also be deeply helpful if they accurately describe a cluster of experiences that are upsetting and mysterious... It suddenly having a name and knowing it's a "thing" and that other people have it too and that there's a treatment available for it, can be a huge relief... Like the label "diabetes" or "asthma"...

For me, it's definitely the latter in this case. It feels like a relief to finally work out WTF is going on and to no longer be stumbling blindly in a painful maze and not finding a way out...

I suddenly remembered that before this episode of (bizarrely) massive depression started, I had an extended manic episode.

The thing is... I very much enjoyed that manic episode at the time... It felt lovely... I felt on top of the world... I didn't associate it with being ill or being the symptom of a disease, at all! Looking back tho, I guess I was engaging in unhealthy, risky behaviour and it landed me in quite a bit of trouble and danger... But I was oblivious to that at the time...

So it seems that for many years, I was going through a mild form of bipolar, which was masked by the PTSD and which went unrecognised. Then, certain life circumstances first set off a manic episode and then triggered an episode of major depression, which seems to now officially qualify me for "Bipolar Type II" and the depressive episode got so bad that it became a psychotic depression.

I'm piecing the pieces of the puzzle together...

 

[arfie]

Yeah, I agree that labels can seem arbitrary.

At the same time, they can also be deeply helpful if they accurately describe a cluster of experiences that are upsetting and mysterious...

absolute agreement on both scores, skin shedder. i often believe that balancing this dichotomy is an indicator of my recovery. when it comes to bringing my psycho snot knots out of isolation. any name will do. JPC (just plain crazy) remains my personal favorite name for my smorgasbord of psych dx'es. i evolve as i recover from those devastating repercussions of child prostitution. i feel like each stage needs a name of it's own.

just a theory i am not ready to present to a doctoral committee.

I'm piecing the pieces of the puzzle together...

ditto. . . i often feel like i'm working with multiple puzzles thrown into a single box with no viable pictures on the box.

 

[Friday]

Nope. Or, rather, major depression? Yes. Psychosis? Twice. Psychotic depression? Nope.

I think it’s good that they can recognise it outside of bipolar mixed episodes, as it would lead to less misdiagnosis/mismanagement/mismedicating/mistreatment, but it’s not a thing in my own life.

Having seen IDFK how many people mad with grief? I expect it’s more commonly tied there. Even though that’s anecdotal in the extreme.

 

[GiantSquid]

Having seen IDFK how many people mad with grief? I expect it’s more commonly tied there. Even though that’s anecdotal in the extreme.

This. After my son's suicide, I went down this path. I know other mothers who are there, too. Guilt pushes us. I guess the only reason why I didn't get the candle obsession (some mothers can't bear for the candles on the grave to go out, so they have to go there every day to make certain there is light) was a fellow Orthodox who extinguished mine on dead people's table when it burned down and made me cry.

My pdoc classified my depression as 'bordering the psychotic' because my expectations of future are so dark and set in stone. I'm on Voxra and Abilify, so I was already on antipsychotics. I simply wait for next horrible thing to happen, it's only a matter of time. When I try to reason with myself, claiming that people don't generally expect the worst from their future and I shouldn't either, it rings as a lie. Then a year later I got auditory hallucinations when I was going through especially triggering phase. If I heard an ambulance on the road, I kept hearing the sirens for a whole day whenever there should have been silence.