I don't know how to help her.
She's tried sertraline but had side effects and quit, leaving her even worse off. At the same time she was on Haloperidol 0.5mg and Lorazepam every night to sleep.
After she quit them all she was ok after a couple weeks, then a couple months on she fell back into depression, severe anxiety and panic attacks constantly having sweaty palms, every day is painful and she is worrying non-stop, and insomnia sleeping only 2-4 hours a night typically. She tried antihistamines like Doxylamine to sleep but they were too powerful for the next day. She works and goes to gym every single day to keep her mind occupied away from her anxiety.
I've tried giving her various supplements including Ashwagandha and Magnesium L-Threonate, Melatonin (she started dosing herself more and more up to 20-30mg a night as tolerance went up, even against my advice).
I think a lot of her anxiety is about returning home from Australia to Thailand where as a Chinese-Thai family she would have no freedom and some of her family is depressed and not doing well too. Her visa expires next year.
I got her to go to a naturopath who tried various combinations of herbs and supplements but she's not responding so far after a few weeks and it's expensive for her.
Doesn't have very good insurance (Medibank international student cover) so has to pay an excess and natural services aren't covered. I don't think she can get any free counselling with that and she's not got a lot of money.
Don't really know where to go from here, she mentioned a couple of times she occasionally considers suicide. She doesn't want to go back on psychiatric drugs but at this point I don't know if she has a choice. Also I know many antidepressants increase risk of suicide. If anyone's been in a similar position what worked for you? Any natural or new methods, psychiatric drugs that don't make things worse, or non-drug therapies that work?
Thanks!
Edited by BioInfinite, 16 November 2019 - 05:07 AM.