The subject of this article is how effective antidepressants are for treating depression.
Those who suffer from severe depression can benefit from antidepressants, when used in combination with psychotherapy. Depression is a serious mental illness in which one experiences profound feelings of sadness and despair that last for weeks or months, and cause problems in thinking, physical symptoms, and severely impact life activities and relationships. It is reported to be second among disabling conditions in the Western world.
Depression is caused by a wide variety of different things. Long-term substance abuse can cause it, or it can occur after a traumatic event, like the death of a loved one, a serious health problem or diagnosis of a terminal illness. Yet curiously enough, depression appears in the same families and may at times be handed down. Depression is recognized as arising due to an imbalance in levels of the brain chemicals known as neurotransmitters that control mood.
A couple of major forms of treating depression exist. The first is psychotherapy, which employs psychological tactics to get to the bottom of the problems and alter ailing emotions, behaviors and relationships. Biomedical therapy, rather than psychotherapy, usually of the antidepressants class, has turned into the most sought after treatment for depression. Newer medications include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, as well as drugs that target different or combined neurotransmitters, such as Wellbutrin and Effexor.
Society has made these drugs into the butt of a lot of jokes. Although many believe that a person who takes antidepressants will be transformed from a severely depressed person into one who is self-assured, extroverted and productive, in reality their role is to help relieve symptoms of depression thereby allowing the person to begin functioning normally again.
Like some drugs taken to cure sickness, antidepressants cause headaches, bad nerves, sleeping difficulties, appetite loss, and sexual troubles. The fact that these antidepressants work well has made them tremendously popular, even with their side effects. Across the globe, there are twenty million Prozac users, with five million of them Americans. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently became aware of a study that involved 159 outpatients and that demonstrated that using Zoloft long-term prevents severe, chronic depression from recurring.
The diminishment of psychotherapy, a long proven productive method of treating depression, was also raised as a matter of alarm. After studying 700 patients suffering from major depression, it was found that treatment plans that use a combination of drug therapy and psychotherapy produce the best results.
When used as prescribed, and along with psychotherapy, antidepressants are useful as a remedy for depression. While serious side effects exist, the benefits are more substantial than the negatives.
Tags: drug therapy, Prescription Drugs, remedy for depression, Zoloft side effects
