How long take antidepressants

Be patient, though. It may take some time to get back to the way you felt before the depression. It is important to remember that antidepressants can help with symptoms of depression. These medicines work best when you try to have an active lifestyle with exercise, get eight hours of sleep a night, and eat healthy foods. Your doctor may also recommend working with a counselor to help you improve the thoughts of depression.

Antidepressants are usually taken every day. It can take 1 or even 2 months to see the full results. You may need to try different kinds or amounts dosages to find the antidepressant that works best for you. Your doctor will let you know how long to take your antidepressant.

If this is the first time you have been treated for depression, you will probably continue to take this medicine for at least 6 months after you begin to feel better.

Depression that comes back a third time may require you to continue taking an antidepressant for a longer time. You can get unwanted side effects if you stop taking your antidepressant suddenly. If you want to stop taking your medicine, talk to your doctor first. He or she can try to help you avoid these side effects.

Talk to your doctor about drinking alcohol while taking an antidepressant. You should be careful about drinking until you know how the medicine affects you. The effects of alcohol can combine with the effects of the antidepressant and cause problems. Regular heavy drinking can make it harder to treat depression.

Certain kinds of medicine can lead to seizures for heavy drinkers. Antidepressants can have an effect on many other medicines. He or she can let you know if your regular medicines may cause problems when combined with an antidepressant. In some cases, the use of antidepressants has been linked to an increase in suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, teens, and young adults. The Food and Drug Administration FDA now requires antidepressants to carry a warning about the risk of suicide in children, teens, and young adults 24 years of age or younger.

It means they should be carefully monitored by their doctor and loved ones while taking the antidepressant. Many doctors will want to see a child or teen sometime in the first few weeks after starting an antidepressant to assess any risk for suicide. All antidepressants have some side effects. However, not all people taking antidepressants have these side effects. Most of the side effects happen in the early weeks of therapy and lessen over time.

You may experience the following:. He or she may change your dosage or suggest another medicine to get rid of the side effects. If you accidentally get pregnant while taking an antidepressant, tell your doctor right away. Your doctor will know if your particular antidepressant is safe to take.

Most medicines you take can pass into your breast milk. That means it may be passed on to your baby. The Royal College of Psychiatry says that antidepressants are not addictive, on the grounds that you do not have to increase your dose to get the same effect or get cravings when you stop the drug. The symptoms of withdrawal — stomach upsets, flu-like symptoms, anxiety, dizziness, nightmares and electric shocks to the head — can last for two months.

Dr James Davies , an academic in social and medical anthropology at the University of Roehampton and member of the all parliamentary group says that people on antidepressants can certainly feel dependent on their drug. When you stop antidepressants should be the result of a discussion between you and your doctor — it is an individual decision and depends on how long and how severely you have been depressed.

A precipitating cause may have gone, or talking therapy may have helped. But you should never stop taking them suddenly because the side-effects can be horrible.

Complete the taper. By the time you stop taking the medication, your dose will be tiny. You may already have been cutting your pills in half or using a liquid formula to achieve progressively smaller doses. Some psychiatrists prescribe a single milligram tablet of fluoxetine the day after the last dose of a shorter-acting antidepressant in order to ease its final washout from the body, although this approach hasn't been tested in a clinical trial.

Check in with your clinician one month after you've stopped the medication altogether. At this follow-up appointment, she or he will check to make sure discontinuation symptoms have eased and there are no signs of returning depression. Ongoing monthly check-ins may be advised. To learn what you can do to get the sleep you need for optimal health, safety, and well-being, but the Harvard Special Health Report Improving Sleep: A guide to a good night's rest.

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