Are anti depressants the answer to anxiety?

@tan253, I think anti-depressants or some form of anxiety medication can only help. You seem to go through phases where you ask a lot of health-related questions, then we won’t see you for a while. I still think seeing a psychiatrist/psychologist is also something you need. Just taking pills isn’t enough. You need to try to get to the root of your problem.

You posted yet another health-related question the other day, and I did actually wonder whether our responses to your many questions are supporting your hypochondria. I have no idea whether we are helping or perhaps hindering.

An SSRI has been a huge help to me getting past my natural tendency towards anxiety. I have gone off it a couple times since starting, and each time I notice myself getting overly upset about things that are objectively not a big deal such as homework. When I’m on it I am much more even keeled and “normal.” I think some of us who are naturally anxious just need the help.

I was put on Prozac for depression and anxiety.
I found it didn’t really help, and I stopped taking it on my own. (Don’t do that.)
I am very much against using medication for depression and anxiety, when it applies to me. I am totally fine and understanding when other people use it but I refuse to be on meds. I feel it’s a temporary fix to issues that can be helped/solved a few different ways that don’t require meds.
Personally, I would really try to avoid taking meds unless you feel you will benefit from it. Like @Earthbound_Misfit said, you need to figure out what the issue is that’s causing the anxiety and come up with solutions for it. If you don’t do that, you can take all the anti depressant/anxiety meds you want, you aren’t going to get better if you don’t make an effort to figure out what’s truly making you feel this way

Yes this is the paradox. Anti depressants will help but go off them and nothing changes…. Im not a band aid person but at the same time – maybe a bandaid will help me to help myself actually heal and change. As @Earthbound_Misfit said – I definitely am cyclical and my cycles are getting worse and lasting longer!

I think if your doctor feels they are appropriate, you should give them a try. If you think of them as a tool to stabilize your mood and anxiety while you work on finding the root to your problems, this can only help you. Right now, it seems to me you’re too anxious to resolve your problems. So anything that’s going to help bring you some calm so you can start to understand what’s going on and to identify and practice some coping strategies has got to be a good thing!

It’s up to you, but personally I avoid drugs if possible and would try some other non-pharmaceutical approaches if you haven’t tried them already. I would try acupuncture, traditional Chinese herbal medicine, hypnosis, and seeing a good shamanic practitioner, as these can all be effective for such symptoms, and my experiences with anti-depressants (in someone I knew) was awful – affected her memory, brain function, presence/awareness and personality in bad and possibly permanent ways.

If I were going to use pharmaceutical antidepressants and had your symptoms, I’d want to involve a psychiatrist as well as medical doctors.

We have suggested therapy for your health related anxiety to you many times. Have you tried it? I truly think that is the place to start. I would go to a licensed clinical social worker or psychologist first and if they feel meds are warranted, they will send you to a psychiatrist to prescribe. These days in America, psychiatrists don’t do real therapy, they just do meds and your problems are so recurrent, I’d suggest you try talk therapy as well as possible medication.

The latest generation of psychotropics and anti-anxiety/anti-depressants are a godsend, for sure. But as a nurse, I think the scrips are handed out too easily by doctors. The side- and long-term effects can be horrendous when often, an intensive workout regime, yoga and meditation can accomplish homeostasis, a chemical balance, in the milder cases. I think the docs should always recommend this first to their patients. Then, if there is no improvement after three months, go with the meds.

I was given this choice by a doctor back in the late nineties. I had become so depressed—for no reason I could think of—that I would go to bed right after work and not get up until it was time to go back. I spent my weekends in bed. I’d lost all interest in life. I lost all interest in my wife and stopped speaking to her unless it was absolutely necessary. I was making her extremely unhappy and confused. It was time to either get a divorce and give her life back to her and go off to live like a hermit, or get some help.

The doc was a man I’d worked with for years. I was lucky. He knew me before I’d become this way. He told me that if I didn’t get a trainer and go into the gym, he’d put my on psychotropics—and I knew what that meant. So, I went into the gym. In about two months of very hard labor without wages, I not only felt ten times better, but I had become so addicted and dependent on gym visits that I sometimes left work early for workouts. LOL. I almost lost a research job because of it. But it saved my ass and saved my marriage. The fog lifted. But it takes work. Lots of work.

And I thank god that I went to that doc instead of one of the many lazy pill pushers out there.

Anti-depressants are not the answer. Anti-anxiety medication is. Sometimes they are one and the same, but your doctor will have to decide. Please describe all your health symptoms to him so he can find the drug that best fits your needs. It may be trial and error for a while until he or she gets it right. Be patient and hang in with the process. Everyone’s chemistry is different.

That is one answer, they can be good to stabilize you. After that it is best to find natural anti-anxiety tactics. One of the best I know of is yoga/meditation. Do that daily, and I’m sure you’ll be off the meds in no time.
Take care.

I live with mental illness. One of which is Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I see a psychiatrist who gives me medicine that honestly helps enormously. I go to a psychologist every other week, and the therapy is a tremendous help.

You must see a psychiatrist.

I don’t take medication for depression or anything like that so I have no personal experience with this, and I don’t have anxiety.

If a doctor prescribed a cast for a broken leg you wouldn’t protest. Why is this any different?