Johns Hopkins Health Alert
Antidepressant Medication: How Long Is Enough?
When doctors first began prescribing antidepressant medications in the 1950s, the prevailing belief was that a short course of medication could cure depression -- much like antibiotics wipe out an infection. But over time, physicians began to realize that depression required longer treatment regimens than originally thought.
Today, experts recognize that major depression and anxiety are long term, often recurrent illnesses. But it isn't necessarily permanent, and many people with mood disorders can eventually stop taking antidepressant medication.
Although antidepressant medications aren't addictive and, when discontinued, don't cause the same type of withdrawal reaction as medications like opiates for pain, your body may still experience withdrawal-like symptoms. If you quit antidepressant medication cold turkey, you could experience physical discomfort or a relapse of your condition. Some people can be tapered off antidepressant medication after an extended period of stability, but these changes need to be timed carefully.
Antidepressant medications usually produce a significant improvement in four to six weeks, although it may take 12 weeks or longer on a therapeutic dose to see the full benefit; this is known as the acute phase. If your condition has improved after this time, you move on to a continuation phase with the goal of preventing a relapse (the return of the same depressive episode).
Continuation treatment lasts anywhere from four months to a year, and you will continue to take the same dosage of the antidepressant medication that worked in the acute phase. If you remain symptom free at the end of the continuation phase, you are recovered, and many people require no further treatment.
Your doctor may prescribe slightly lower doses of your antidepressant medication in the maintenance phase than during the acute or continuation phases. Maintenance treatment may be especially important for older adults, for whom research indicates high rates of recurrence: 50 to 90% over a two- to three-year period, as cited by a study in The New England Journal of Medicine. To assess whether maintenance treatment could ward off recurrence, this study found that people ages 70 and older who took the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) paroxetine (Paxil) for two years after successful continuation treatment were almost two and a half times less likely to have a recurrence than those who took a placebo during this time.
Despite these guidelines, there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to treatment length. However, recent evidence shows that many people require a year or more of antidepressant therapy to treat a major episode of depression or anxiety adequately.
Posted in Depression and Anxiety on February 24, 2010
Reviewed January 2011
Medical Disclaimer: This information is not intended to substitute for the advice of a physician. Click here for additional information: Johns Hopkins Health Alerts Disclaimer
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Women must stand up to big pharma’s bullying them to over-medicate with antidepressants washing out their emotions & personalities and interfering being mothers, sisters, brothers, daughters, partners and lovers.. Women are targeted for antidepressants by big Pharma in the same way that tobacco companies targeted us 70 years ago. Drug companies are so effective at selling unhappiness to women that women take more than twice as many antidepressants as men. http://sadnessaddiction.blogspot.com/
Posted by: sadnessaddiction | March 24, 2010 12:21 PM