Will I Always Need Medications?

Yes, No, Maybe? Although I'm not allowed to make any recommendations about medications. However, I am allowed to ask questions and be curious about when and why you were prescribed your medications in the first place. This is all part of doing my own due diligence and my own Clinical Assessment.

When new clients come to see us, it is important for us to evaluate your mental health history, which includes discussing psychotropic medications you have taken in the past and medications you are taking now. The reason we do this is because we want to reach our own conclusions about your symptoms and your diagnosis. So many practitioners just simply "assume" and continue to carry over your previous diagnosis because someone else said so. This practice can lead to misdiagnosis, wrong treatment, wrong medications, and well... you end up making little to no progress.

The Anti-Depressant Myth

A common myth is that once you start anti-depressants, you need to take them for the rest of your life. Says who? The conversation goes like this: "Well doctor, I feel better now, I don't think I need my anti-depressant anymore." Doctor might say, "Well, you aren't depressed because it is working, so therefore you should continue taking it so you don't become depressed again."

Of course, this isn't the case for everyone. This would be the most common case for people who experience situational depression — a situation that causes you depression like getting a divorce, job loss, grief, etc. Those are temporary life stressors that with time will improve and heal. But somehow, years after this, some people still find themselves taking medications for 5, 10, 20 years!

Questions to Ask Yourself

If you're on anti-depressants, ask yourself these questions:

• What was the original reason I was prescribed my medication?
• Am I still going through that same situation? If No, then why are you still on it?
• Are the medications helping? If not, why are you still taking them?
• Have you tried therapy?

In the end, medications can't cure situational depression. Always talk to your doctor about medication side effects, changing medications, or discontinuing them before doing so.