Depression medications face a lot of stigmas in society and now medications used are well tolerated and the side effects are very minor. Medically supervised medications can take several weeks to resolve symptoms of depression and need to be maintained for often 6-9 months. Doctors can then reassess the patient for the use of the medication based on symptoms.
Again stigma of mental illness and the treatment of mental illness there’s still a lot of false beliefs about the medications that are used for depression very frequently the patients will tell me well i don’t want to be a zombie i don’t want to feel like a zombie i don’t want to be drooling on myself i don’t want to be asleep all day long i want to participate
And so perhaps this is all based on the medications that were used several decades ago but now the medications that we are using are very safe in general they don’t make people sleepy or tired they do have a side effect but the side effects in general again are well tolerated in our minor or very mild compared to the medications that they used decades ago and this
Side effects most commonly what people will tell us mildly upset stomach or mild headaches sometimes again depending on a medication sometimes people can have a mild dry dryness of the mouth sometimes sexual side effects all these medications that we use for treatment of depression are medications that take several weeks to start to work and again in general the
Belief is that you need to be taking the medications for three to four weeks sometimes two to three weeks to see help from the medication but not resolution of all symptoms so it takes on it takes about two to three weeks for the medicine just start to work and then you need to stay on stay on your medication anywhere between six to nine months at least and then
Be reevaluated for the use of the medication if after nine months or so all your symptoms of depression resolved and you feel well it would be reasonable to get yourself off medication under the medical supervision so your doctor would help you to get you off the medication then there should be some sort of monitoring for recurrence of the symptoms so you should
Be the patient should be connected with the doctors for additional maybe two to three months just to have an visit and see how the things are going if there is a records of the symptoms then there the patients is faced with the decision do i want to start the medication do i want to start the therapy perhaps do our one out to see how how things were developed but
Again in general the recommendation is if somebody had two depressive episodes or more the patients tend to benefit from a lifelong treatment but or lifelong treatment for depression and that can be either therapy or the medications but the reason why that is is because if you if the patient had two episodes or more the recurrence of the further depressive episodes
Is pretty high and we know that the treatment can actually prevent depressive episodes from coming or if they come back then they tend to be less severe
Transcribed from video
What are the side effects of taking medicine for depression? By Ascension Via Christi