~~Please forgive me if I'm doing this incorrectly. This is my first time posting on this site.
I wasn't to tell everybody who're depressed that, for starters, I KNOW what you're going through. I've been there, as bad as it gets, and I finally found a treatment that brought me out of it. The normal SSRIs used to help me, but after some years, they stopped working. I was desperate, so I went to the Cleveland Clinic. A wise doctor there put me on the road to recovery, and it worked. He told me to try a course of a med called anafranil (scientific name: clomipramine. I was as skeptical as a person can be, but it worked to bring me out of treatment-resistan major clinical depression. He said to do a tril of 100 mgs/day for at least three months. I tried it, and it brought me completely back to normal, believe it or not, but it's true.
The tricky part with this med is that it makes you feel somewhat worse before it finally kicks in, the side effects all go away, and the curtain of depression is lifted. I don't know if this will work for you or not, everybody's body chemistry is different, I suppose. I was never psychotic, so if that's your problem, ig nore this post–I can't help you. But if you happen to be like me, with episodic major clinical depression, without psychosis, like me, maybe what finally worked for me will also work for you.
The side effects were fairly nasty, but as I said, they completely went away (for me) after three full months of suffering through them. Side effects include dry mouth and nasal passages, some weight gain, some sleep interruption, and worst of all, a SLIGHT worsening of depression symptoms. I had tried this med several times previously, but always quit it before the dosage finally reached its therapueutic level. I had no other options, so I committed myself to give it one last try–and it worked like a charm.
I had been in a period of severe clinical depression for three and a half years, when I started this regimen, and now I'm back to normal, so much so that I feel elated, just like I've been let out of jail or something like that. I am NOT the least bit manicy, it's just such a God-give relief to be normal again, it feels great all of the time. Three full months at 100 mgs or more MIGHT work for you if, like me you're at the seeming end.
Anafranil/clomipramine is usually given for OCD, which I also have mildly. It's a tricycling antidepressant, not an SSRI. Your psychiatrist is the only one who can prescribe it for you. If you are willing to suffer just a bit more, for three months, you might try this. It actually did work for me. The odd part for me was that my OCD symptoms are still there: like excessive teeth brushing, hand washing, etc., but those symptoms are just a mild inconvenience for me, not life-changing, like my depression was.
