Medicinal treatment
If you suffer from depression, the amount of signalling substances (neurotransmitters) is reduced in your brain. The most important signalling substances are
- serotonin
- noradrenaline
- dopamine
When we treat depression with antidepressants, the amount of signalling substances in the brain is increased and that makes your mood normal.
During the last 40 years there has been a rapid development in the medicinal treatment of depression. Many types of antidepressants have been developed, which are all effective. If you take this medicine correctly, you can nearly always improve your condition within a relatively short time.
Follow the doctor's advice
The goal of the treatment of depression is to remove your symptoms, in the same way that insulin removes the symptoms of diabetes. The most important thing for an antidepressant treatment to work is that you take your medicine as prescribed by your doctor. It is a very bad idea to reduce the amount of medicine you take or not to take your medicine every day. There are actually quite a lot of people who take less medicine that they should.
We would like to counteract this trend. We do that by informing you of the purpose of the treatment, its effect and about the adverse effects that can occur. When you are well informed, you will know how important it is to take the medicine in the way that your doctor or psychiatrist prescribed it.
Checkups
Everyone who receives medicinal treatment has to go to their doctor for checkups. It is important to monitor accurately how that treatment is working and when you feel well again. In most cases, there are no problems connected with the treatment. You will become well again on the medicine that your doctor recommends. Two to three weeks will pass before you begin to notice the effect of the medicine. It is therefore very common not to feel well until after four to six weeks of treatment.
In rare cases the medicine and the dose that your doctor has prescribed doesn't work effectively. Luckily, your doctor or psychiatrist has many possibilities of improving your treatment by choosing to
- point out how important it is to remember taking your medicine correctly
- continue your treatment for a while longer without making any changes to it
- give a larger dose of the same medicine
- change to another antidepressant
- combine antidepressants with other forms of medicine
- combine antidepressants and psychotherapy
- combine antidepressants and ECT