Starting on depression medication can be scary, discover what to expect to make it easier

Many people wait years before getting help for depression or anxiety. Let me congratulate you for taking the first steps to feeling better. The journey begins after you’ve scheduled your first appointment and have been evaluated by a mental health professional. In your visit, they recommended medication management for your symptoms. Are you feeling hesitant and not sure what to expect?

Frequently, your psychiatric provider will recommend you start with an antidepressant. Antidepressants are the most common drug class in mental health. These medications can treat several different diagnoses including anxiety, mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Antidepressants work by increasing the amount of important chemicals in your brain or balancing out the effects of these neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters act like messengers to send signals from one nerve cell to another. These signals do everything from making your arms and legs move, to sending important messages throughout your brain. When people are experiencing depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD the brains messages are not working properly. For more information on this, read our upcoming blog post “The Default Mode Network and Glutamate, what the Serotonin model of depression missed.” This irregular routing contributes to many of the symptoms we see with depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD. These medications work by increasing the amount of neurotransmitter in your brain which helps the brain develop neuroplasticity and the ability to heal.

Some people are afraid to take this type of medication out of fear of side effects. One side effect that’s a common myth is that you will feel like a “zombie,” or feel emotionless. While people can feel tired when they first start medication, the benefits outweigh feeling tired. Antidepressants can help improve feelings of sadness, low mood, hopelessness, feeling on edge, and excessive worry. The medication shouldn’t make you feel out of touch with yourself or your emotions. If this occurs, notify your provider as you may need to change medications.

Because of the neural networks that antidepressants improve, medications work best to treat symptoms when combined with therapy. Therapy provides treatment for how your thoughts may be contributing to mental health symptoms, while medications treat the chemical side of things. This gives patients a chance to build new positive coping mechanisms and habits. Antidepressants can take 1 to 3 weeks to start working. Most people don’t feel a difference until 4 to 6 weeks as this is when the medication can reach maximum efficacy. Most symptoms associated with depression and anxiety will improve once the right dose is achieved. Changing the dose is a common occurrence, which can prolong significant improvement of symptoms. In some cases, clients may not respond to the first medication, and it may take a trial-and-error approach with other medicines to find one that works. Rarely, individuals don’t experience any relief with medication and may need to trial alternative treatments.