There are several types of medications available to treat mental illness. The mostly used include antidepressants, anti-anxiety, antipsychotic, mood stabilizing and stimulant medications.
There are several medication options available when treating depression. The mostly used include:
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), resembling citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram oxalate (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), paroxetine HCI (Paxil), and sertraline (Zoloft).
- Selective serotonin and norepinephrine inhibitors (SNRIs), resembling desvenlafaxine (Khedezla), desvenlafaxine succinate (Pristiq), duloxetine (Cymbalta), levomilnacipran (Fetzima), and venlafaxine (Effexor).
- Novel serotonergic drugs resembling vortioxetine (Trentellix – formerly called Brintellix) or vilazodone (Viibryd)
- Older tricyclic antidepressants resembling amitriptyline (Elavil), imipramine (Tofranil), nortriptyline (Pamelor), and doxepin (Sinequan).
- Medications thought to primarily affect dopamine and norepinephrine, resembling: B. Bupropion (Wellbutrin).
- Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), resembling isocarboxazid (Marplan), phenelzine (Nardil), selegiline (EMSAM), and tranylcypromine (Parnate).
- Tetracyclic antidepressants, that are noradrenergic and specific serotonergic antidepressants (NaSSAs), resembling mirtazapine (Remeron).
- L-methylfolate (Deplin) has been shown to achieve success in treating depression. Classified by the FDA as a medical food or nutraceutical, it’s the energetic type of considered one of the B vitamins called folate and helps regulate the neurotransmitters that control mood. Although it will not be technically a medicine, it still requires a prescription.
Your doctor can determine which medication is correct for you. Keep in mind that it often takes 4 to six weeks for medications to take full effect. And if one medication doesn't work, there are lots of others you may try.
In some cases, a mix of antidepressants, sometimes called augmentation, could also be needed. Sometimes an antidepressant together with one other sort of drug, resembling a mood stabilizer (resembling lithium), a second antidepressant, or an atypical antipsychotic, is essentially the most effective treatment.
Side effects vary depending on the sort of medication you take and should improve as your body adjusts to the medication.
If you choose to stop taking your antidepressants, it can be crucial that you just steadily reduce the dose over a period of several weeks. For many antidepressants, stopping abruptly could cause discontinuation symptoms or increase the chance of depression relapse. It is significant that you just discuss stopping (or changing) medications along with your doctor first.
Antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, may also be effective in treating many varieties of anxiety disorders.
Other anti-anxiety medications include benzodiazepines resembling alprazolam (Xanax), clonazepam (Klonopin), diazepam (Valium), and lorazepam (Ativan). These medications carry a risk of addiction and are subsequently not as desirable for long-term use. Other possible unwanted effects include drowsiness, poor concentration and irritability.
The drug buspirone (Buspar) is a novel non-habit-forming serotonergic medication commonly used to treat generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Some antiepileptic drugs, resembling gabapentin (Neurontin) or pregabalin (Lyrica), are sometimes used off label (without an official FDA indication) to treat certain forms of hysteria.
Finally, some conventional and atypical antipsychotics have been shown to scale back anxiety symptoms related to the treatment of depression or psychosis and might sometimes be used “off label” to treat anxiety.
Antipsychotics are a category of medication often used to treat psychotic disorders – conditions through which considering could also be irrational and other people have false beliefs (delusions) or perceptions (hallucinations) – and sometimes to treat mood disorders resembling bipolar disorder or major depression grow to be . The unwanted effects of various antipsychotics vary, and a few people have more trouble with certain unwanted effects than others. The doctor may change medications or dosages to reduce unpleasant unwanted effects. An obstacle of some antipsychotics is that they could cause unwanted effects resembling sedation and problems with involuntary movements, weight gain, and changes in blood sugar or cholesterol, which require regular laboratory monitoring. Different antipsychotics have different side effect profiles, so work along with your doctor to decide on the appropriate medication for you.
Many unwanted effects of antipsychotics are mild and infrequently disappear after the primary few weeks of treatment. Common unwanted effects may include:
- sleepiness
- Fast or irregular heartbeat
- Dizziness when changing position
- Decrease in sexual interest or ability
- Problems with menstruation
- Rashes or skin sensitivity to the sun
- Weight gain
- Muscle cramps
- Restlessness and speed
- Slowing of movement and speech
- Shuffling walk
- Menstrual disorders in women
However, some serious unwanted effects are possible, especially with long-term use of antipsychotics. These unwanted effects include:
- Tardive dyskinesia: This is a movement disorder that causes unusual and uncontrollable movements, often of the tongue and face (e.g. protruding the tongue and smacking the lips) and sometimes jerking and twisting movements of other parts of the body. It will be treated by taking deutetrabenazine (Austedo) or valbenazine (Ingrezza).
- Neuroleptic malignant syndrome: This is a potentially fatal condition characterised by severe muscle stiffness (stiffness), fever, sweating, hypertension, delirium and sometimes coma.
- Agranulocytosis: This is a disease characterised by a pointy decline within the variety of infection-fighting white blood cells. This condition can leave the person vulnerable to infections and at the next risk of death. Agranulocytosis has been particularly related to Clozaril, where it might occur in 1 in 100 patients. People taking Clozaril might want to have regular blood tests to closely monitor white blood cell counts. However, all antipsychotics carry an FDA warning indicating that as a category they carry a risk of lowering white blood cell counts.
- Changes in blood sugar and cholesterol: Some atypical antipsychotics could cause a rise in blood sugar (which may eventually result in diabetes) and blood lipids resembling cholesterol and triglycerides. Regular blood tests are required to observe these aspects.
If the unwanted effects of antipsychotics are particularly bothersome, your doctor may change medications or dosages, or sometimes add additional medications, to counteract unwanted effects resembling weight gain or high blood fat levels. The newer atypical antipsychotics seem like significantly higher tolerated and have fewer unwanted effects resembling movement disorders or drowsiness. However, they require monitoring of weight and metabolic risks, which seem like higher than those of older generation antipsychotics.
Newer antipsychotics include:
Olanzapine/samidorphan (Lybalvi)
Another group of medicines called stimulants will be used for certain disorders, most notably attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The mostly used stimulants include amphetamine-salt combination (Adderall, Adderall Recently, the FDA approved a once-daily mixed salt treatment of an amphetamine product called dextroamphetamine-amphetamine (Mydayis).
A category of medication called alpha-agonists are non-stimulant drugs which are also sometimes used to treat ADHD. Examples include clonidine (Catapres) and guanfacine (Intuniv).
Atomoxetine (Strattera) also has FDA approval for the treatment of ADHD. It is a non-stimulant agent that’s more much like the SNRI antidepressants. However, the agency has also warned that children and teenagers who take it could have suicidal thoughts.
The antidepressant buproprion (Wellbutrin) can be sometimes used to treat ADHD.
The FDA requires all ADHD medications to incorporate patient medication guides that detail the intense consequences of taking the medications, including a rather higher risk of stroke, heart attack and sudden death, in addition to psychiatric problems resembling manic or psychotic.
Many medications used to treat mental disorders in adults are also used to treat the identical disorders in children. However, doctors often adjust the doses administered and monitor the condition more closely.
The FDA has found that antidepressants may increase the chance of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and adolescents with depression and other psychiatric disorders. If you have got any questions or concerns, discuss them along with your doctor.
Medication cannot cure mental illness. Rather, they serve to manage a lot of essentially the most troubling symptoms and infrequently enable individuals with mental disorders to return to normal or near-normal functioning. Relieving symptoms with medication can even improve the effectiveness of other treatments, resembling psychotherapy (a type of counseling).