I'm frustrated with my mental health

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I really don't know what to do about myself. Physically, I can handle my health problems. But I feel like I'm in over my head when it comes to the mental side of things. Between, Anxiety, random swings between depression and mania, and the occasional seizure, I'm overwhelmed

I almost committed suicide last week. I had a plan in hand, and was writing out a suicide note last tuesday, when I was able to wake up to what I was actually doing and step back. The last two days have been a manic upswing that is now tapering off. This doesn't happen enough to get a bipolar diagnosis. It happens maybe once every few months that I cycle through like this. I don't know why it happens. I feel like there is a trigger somewhere but I haven't been able to narrow it down.

Once I was able to get alcohol in me on Saturday, the buzz brought me up out of the depression and the manic turned on. I drank more alcohol on Saturday than I had in the entire previous month, but it got me through.

I feel like I have almost no control when this swing happens. It's frustrating. I feel like my mental issues are ticking time bomb waiting to go off. I know that if I don't realize what's going on, I may do something stupid like actually following through with the suicide.

I really don't want to die but I do recognize that when it gets dark, the depression filters everything making life worse.

If it was a physical problem, I'd have no problem taking care of it. As an example my right knee is messed up. I've gone to physical therapy. I'm getting an MRI for it today to find out if I need surgery. I'm mid transition, mtf. I'm on HRT, had hair transplant surgery, done facial hair removal, lost a lot of weight, and started changing my ward robe out.

The physical is easy.

But for this mental s**t, I'm in over my head. I feel so powerless to do anything about it. Still I keep on trying to mitigate the mental problems I have. And it seems like life comes back saying, "SOOOPRISE, mother f****r, you failed again."

Have you spoken to your GP about these feelings, specifically the suicidal ideation?

My previous GP, prescribed me Citalapram for my anxiety and depression. It didn't stop the random swings. It helped with the anxiety. Didn't stop the anxiety, just masked it. I could feel it there, but it was a like I could see the anxiety, but not have it affect me. It also adversely affected my will to do things. I just stopped doing a lot of things I previously did for fun or hobbies.

My current GP knows, but is more concerned with my HRT, and my physical health.

I usually run deficient in Vitamin D and I take an otc supplement daily per doctors orders.

I get bloodwork every three months, and it's always good. No high cholesterol. Hormone levels are good. BP is always good because I manage it. Due to my experience with citalopram, I'm adverse to ever trying citalopram again or anything similar to it. It needs to work differently, or be something else for me to want to try a prescription for it. The confusing thing is that the depression and anxiety don't happen often enough or with any seemingly regularity to warrant in my opinion continued use of an anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication when I'm not depressed or filled with anxiety.

Regular Exercise is on hold due to my knee. I was going to physical therapy twice a week for the last ten weeks. It was always leg day everyday and leg day is my fav day.

I get a massage at least once a month, and that helps a lot to reduce stress and relieve physical tension. I wish I could afford to go 2 or more times a month.

I stay away from food I'm allergic to. I won't have anaphylactic shock when I eat food allergies. I just get sick and it can make depression or anxiety worse if it happens, but doesn't cause it that I can correlate.

I've tried three different diets, one based on a high protein-low carb meal set, one a vegetarian base, and one where anything went(except allergies) but was the smaller portions throughout the day. The smaller meal portions helped with weight loss, but not with the mental health aspect, other than feeling good about myself weight less.

I don't use my CPAP as much as I should. Disuse of the cpap does not correlate with the extreme mood swings, anxiety, and seizures.

I've had an MRI for my head earlier this year. No defects like lesions, plaque, or growths.

I don't seem to be able to correlate the mood swing to any event. It doesn't happen regularly. It doesn't happen often. When it does, It's usually more than I can handle.

Same for when I get a seizure, or the anxiety. The seizures happen once ever few months, and I can't tie them to anything. The Anxiety just turns on and off randomly. Things happen that should cause anxiety and it stays off. Things happen that shouldn't cause anxiety and it turns on. The anxiety just turns on, and then unexplainably turns off.

I spend time with friends, and have a few of them I can talk with about things. I'm on good terms right now with my parents.

I have no overbearing physical health problems. Lots of minor ones that add up to be annoying, but nothing life threatening if I don't deal with it.

The next thing I'm going to try is basing my diet around increasing dopamine, and maybe Tyrosine OTC supplements, but I'm hesitant to add a supplement. Most likely I'll just change my diet. The cost of food is already budgetted, whereas getting a supplement is an additional cost.

I don't want to say that my mental health problems are affecting my lifestyle, but I spend a lot of time trying to mitigate them when they crop up.

Diet: have you researched Candida? It might be worth trying an anti candida diet for a few months.

Anxiety: you might be an ideal candidate for diazepam. To be taken only when anxiety levels go through the roof. Monitor self carefully for tolerance and addiction. But if you're only taking a few tabs every week or so you should be fine.

I had a major anxiety attack last thursday - adrenaline flooded body and i got scared. Two diazepam knocked it on the head within an hour and loud rock music finished the job.

Since you're open to the idea of food causing you to feel terrible, have you gone gluten free before? Like, really gluten free, as in, you've scoured your kitchen for breadcrumbs and only eaten non-packaged, fresh food for at least a month? Wheat is in everything, even if it's not chances are the spices in it aren't free from gluten.
Secondly, have you been tested for celiac disease? Some people won't even reach puberty because of celiac disease, so obviously it can mess up your hormones. It's useless to be tested for it if you are gluten free though.

A more stable mood was one of the first things to improve when I went gluten free. That and I stopped getting hot and cold flashes pretty immediately. All my other symptoms took a loooong time to go away though. And I was dx with celiac disease. All my blood work for everything else always came up 'all clear' too. Once my ferritin (but not my iron) was low. That's it.

Celiac disease and gluten intolerance (Well, I believe the 2 might as well be the same thing, celiac disease being a specific subset of gluten intolerance) aren't regular allergies. Allergies are histaminergic reactions, IgE. Celiac disease is an IgA mediated reaction. The only medication that's supposed to help any sort of celiac reaction, that I know of, is prednisone, and that's only for the skin condition, dermatitis herpetiformis, associated with it. Some groups are trying to develop pills to reduce the auto-immune reaction for celiacs but from what I've heard they're not promising.
I bet other meds that reduce overall immune system function, like something someone would take for, say, arthritis, would help the symptoms too. But that's foolish anyways, just avoid it in the first place :-p

The celiac forum I used to go to often suggested making food diaries. Some people found that they'd have the worst gluten reactions weeks after ingestion.

It's not a matter of gluten working your way through your body to not have a reaction, it's a matter of when will your immune system stop wigging out. For instance, in people that do have the skin condition, apparently antibodies can stay in your skin for years after ingestion of any gluten.

You really, really need to be incredibly careful of what you eat. I don't go out to eat anymore, period. I would if there were a dedicated gluten free restaurant in my town, but there's not. People who advertise gluten free are just as suspect as other places. I can't buy meat from the local pepperoni maker, I react to their products sometimes, even though they boldly say 'gluten free'. I stopped eating at both my parents' places, they just couldn't handle to keep things safe enough. 5parts-per-million to 20ppm is the threshold of gluten that, if you have a gluten intolerance, you will be able to eat without having your immune system act up. That's ridiculously small. If you're not 100% certain that a food is gluten free, you shouldn't be eating it. I wouldn't rule out gluten as causing your mood swings unless you are certain you aren't ingesting any for at least a month's time, probably longer than that too. A 100% fresh food diet, prepared in a dedicated gluten free kitchen's is by far the easiest way of assuring that. To me, it's just easier than having to call companies that will give you the run around anyways (well, we can't guarantee, but it's not added. Oh, yeah, there's oats in that, but that's not gluten, etc.)

Beyond that it's probably worthwhile to take some vitamins, even if all but the D comes back as 'in range'. The ranges are just that, ranges. They're developed such that 95-99% of people (I think it's only 95%, but I forget what my stats prof said now specifically) will not show symptoms of deficiency if you're somewhere in that range. So 2.5% of people will need MORE than the maximum dose to not be deficient (the other 2.5% will not show symptoms even if they're under the lower limit). Besides which, I GUARANTEE your dr. hasn't tested you for every, single vitamin and nutrient deficiency possible. Nearly all deficiencies will cause fatigue and mental instability.

I get reactions to plenty of foods labelled gluten free myself. My peripheral neuropathy seems to be the most telling sign that I've had something I shouldn't have, and it's been the most pervasive of all my symptoms. Lasts for weeks if I've messed up, took the longest to go away (not that it's been away for very long....grumble). Mood swings, if caused by gluten ingestion, are neurological, and they might respond just as slowly to being gluten free as my peripheral nerve damage. I hope that this I the case for you at least, I truly do. Because then you can get rid of them for good!

It's hard being gluten free, and people won't understand just how cautious you have to be. No, you won't go into anaphalactic shock from it, but it a sense it's worse because you don't have a needle you can plunge into your arm to make the reaction stop.