Not all medicine match with all people, and so psychiatrists need to change the medicine until they find the one that your organism accepts. For dosages when you first start a new medicine you will always start with a small dosage and the psychiatrist will increase the dosage over time until its in full effect.
Now you say you've visited a couple of psychiatrists, i would actually recommend you visit 1 psychiatrist as there is always the problem of different diagnosis by different psychiatrists which will confuse you.
But wouldn't your wife see it in a positive way that you're asking for help? I am sure she knows that you have your own problems so she would want you to ask for help.
Constantinos,
With all due respect, I'm not unaware of how psychiatrists (or doctors generally) increase dosages of medications incrementally. What I briefly described took place over a five year period. I was an undergraduate and seeing a psychiatrist through the student health center at my university. I only changed psychiatrists because the psychiatrists there were in residency and rotating through the system as part of their own schooling (that is, they changed themselves). The meetings were always highly impersonal, and I became suspicious that I was being treated like a bottle of toothpaste on a conveyor belt. Negligent treatment actually does happen in such high volume settings. I began keeping track of my own highs and lows, as well as the mild hallucinations typical of schizo-affective disorder. They stayed constant despite increases in dosages and medication changes. I continued (and still continue) to keep track of my patterns of depression and other symptoms, and find them completely unchanged from that period to now. I was, in other words, no better off during my five years of treatment than I now am in my three years without it. Depression comes and goes. Hallucinations are no stronger and no more common. Suicidal thoughts, as before, remain fairly constant (I don't need to feel depressed to have them). Some depressives (or whatever I am) simply don't appreciably respond to medication.
However, I have considered pursuing some form of talk therapy (as opposed to a medication-oriented treatment), but I simply can't afford it at this point, and I'm also generally trying to keep my experiences on the down low for now.
As for my wife, she explicitly told me to stop talking about my thoughts of suicide, not because she's a bad person and doesn't care, but because it simply reopens the very fresh wound of her sister's death. She has been, for obvious reasons, a changed person--much more insular and dismissive---since that tragedy occurred, and she also has a life she has to lead. I don't have any hard feelings about it. Unfortunately, we recently moved to a new place, and I don't have any close friends here, so there is no one else to talk to. (And talking about how I'd like to die isn't the best way of making new friends anyway!)
Thank you for your response. I hope my responses were not too terse or dismissive. I just need you to know that I know my options and have reasons for not pursuing some of the more easily recommended ones.
Take care.
