long term depression after chemotherapy

[JBL123]

I am four years post-chemotherapy for breast cancer and have struggled with persistent depression ever since. I've seen numerous doctors and tried many therapies, both traditional and alternative. Nothing has helped. Does anyone have any experience in this area?

[ainnle]

Yes My father was diagnosed with brain cancer 2 1/2 years ago and within eight months he had undergone brain surgery and chemo treatments successfully with all 3 brain tumors gone.  We thought we were out of the woods but a month after the all clear my father became depressed and overly anxious to the point of believing he was going broke which was far from the facts.  He was put on 60 mg of Cymbalta that brought him back to his normal self.  Our family is very anti-medication so as time went on we thought he could be taken off it.  After a year he was slowly weaned off it and sure enough the symptoms returned  and we realized that he would have to take this medication perhaps for the rest of his life.  He is now on 40mg of Cymbalta and all is well.  Hope this helps.

[i8soup]

Wow, talk about a relevant topic.  I am new to this so hopefully my post will show up and show up in the correct place.

I just happened upon your topic tonight as I was researching chemotherapy based depression.  I am a 41 year old man who had extensive cancer treatment around 13 years ago and I have suffered from major depression that I never had prior to my treatment.  For history, I had a soft tissue sarcome that was treated as follows:  stem cell transplant along with high-dose chemo (MAID regime I believe), followed by surgery to remove entire hamstring muscle in leg which contained tumor, followed by brachytherapy, normal localized radiation, and then follow-up chemo which was supposed to be 6 rounds but limited to 3 rounds due to complications.  Total treatment time of approximately 9 months.

I was fine for a couple of years due to what I believe was just wanting to get on with living a normal life.  But then I crashed: separation from my wife, divorce, new relationship, end of that relationship, instability, multiple suicide attempts, and just all around major depression and anxiety.  Not what you would expect from a cancer survivor who is just glad on one hand to be alive.