Do antidepressants work for negative symptoms?

Medications
1

did they help any of you guys?
what’s the difference between negatives and depression?

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This is a really good question. When I was on a cocktail including an antidepressant I felt happier and was doing more things daily. Without going into how or why, now I’m just on a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic and I’m depressed every day and do little with my time.

I don’t have an answer but I hope someone else does.

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3

I think some main components of depression are sadness and hopelessness. These may not be present when you are suffering with the negatives. For me I did not notice an improvement in my lack of motivation when I was taking an anti-depressant. But each person will react differently and each medicine will have a different effect. Are you starting an antidepressant?

4

They never worked for me. Not for depression or negatives.

5

Negative symptoms is when you have symptoms of depression but you are not sad and don’t have low mood. It is caused by sz/sza. This is not called depression but negative symptoms of sz/sza.

Antidepressants only work on depression not negative symptoms.

6

No it’s for depression

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7

i’m still not sure if it helped with my cognitive deficits, I was just noticing a correlation that doesn’t necessarily imply the answer.

8

Here is something that might help.

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9

Too much to read for schizophrenic

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10

Yeah maybe too technical too

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11

Antidepressants just make me manic and psychotic.

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12

This is the relevant part about antidepressants:

" Only one of three earlier meta-analyses focused on negative symptoms offered support for such an approach [24–26]. The fourth and most recent meta-analysis also did not identify changes that were clinically significant"

I.e. it doesn’t really work well for negative symptoms.
Some of the more alternative approaches they examined show promise, but there are no approaches as of yet that show clinically significant and robust effects for negative symptoms.

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13

Yeah but I am low on energy now not so interested in technical stuff

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14

I’ve found them to improve my showering habits brushing my teeth and ever so slightly improve my enjoyment. I am cooking a bit more so overall my motivation is a bit better. Not everything seems like climbing Mount Everest.

Things are better than they were a couple of months ago. I will likely stay on the anti depressant. So I’d say yes they do work a bit.

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15

i think negatives can cause you to feel quite sad and hopeless. it’s confusing.
I’m thinking of trying them, yeah.
just unsure whether i feel miserable due to the negatives, or if it’s actually depression.
worth a shot either way i suppose!

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16

did you try more than one?
I took sertraline a few years back and it made me very psychotic also.
kind of nervous to try antidepressants again after that.

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17

I was on Imipramine at the time.
It made me so high and delusional.

Listen to your doctors @Catch22.
You may be fine.

18

Antidepressants make me agitated and suicidal tendencies. He says clozapine will eventually help with those. I’ve yet to be free of negative symptoms other than in mania.
My pdoc says my cognitive impairment is an unfortunate part of the disease.

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i tried welbutrin for it, made me very anxious to point of getting sensory overload and anxiety attacks. so it didnt work for me!
coffee helps get me moving but not always