Taking antidepressants may help to lift your mood. This can help you feel more able to do things that don't feel possible while you're depressed. This may include using other types of support for your mental health.
Antidepressants work by balancing chemicals in your brain called neurotransmitters that affect mood and emotions. These depression medicines can help improve your mood, help you sleep better, and increase your appetite and concentration.
The Evidence for Personality Changes
Study authors suggested that the SSRI may have altered two key personality traits linked to depression—neuroticism and extroversion—independently of their effect on depression symptoms.
Antidepressants can cause dizziness and unsteadiness, increasing the risk of falls and bone fractures, especially in older people. Interactions with other medications can increase this risk. A very small number of people have had heart problems, epileptic fits or liver damage while taking antidepressants.
This is because antidepressants can increase your energy and motivation levels, which may be very low while you are depressed. Early in your treatment, you may experience more energy and motivation before your feelings of depression have started to lift. This might mean you have enough energy act on suicidal urges.
They help with emotional balance and reduce symptoms like restlessness, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. As antidepressants work to help treat your depression, they, in turn, can help you sleep better.
When it comes to antidepressants, the types of “personality” changes are actually side effects of the medication - like agitation, irritability, an increase in anxiety, an increase in extroversion, and more.
Antidepressants balance neurotransmitters in your brain. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly known as SSRIs, do this by balancing the serum serotonin levels to help your brain regulate your moods. While they're called antidepressants, most offer benefits in the treatment of anxiety, as well.
If you experience anxiety
If you have a form of anxiety or phobia, an antidepressant could help you feel calmer and more able to deal with other problems. It could also help you feel more able to benefit from other anxiety treatments, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
This is one of the more common myths associated with the condition. You do not need to take antidepressants forever nor do you need to get a prescription from a counselor or therapist. During your first few sessions, you'll have the chance to talk about your needs and find out whether antidepressants can help.
Many people with depression continue taking antidepressant drugs for months or even years after their symptoms have resolved. This so-called maintenance therapy aims to reduce the risk of relapse. The numbers of people taking maintenance therapy for depression is increasing.
If your depression or anxiety is mild to moderate, and if time and a talking treatment have not helped, and especially if things are getting worse, then you should consider taking an antidepressant.
On antidepressant medication, it is possible that you might experience a sense of feeling numb and less like yourself. Though the symptoms of depression have decreased, there may be a sense that other emotional responses – laughing or crying, for example – are more difficult to experience.
SSRIs are considered first-choice medications for treating depression. These medications are believed to work by raising the amount of serotonin — a hormone that helps regulate mood — in the brain.
The technical term for the most commonly used antidepressant medications is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. This refers to the drugs' effects — they cause the brain to produce more serotonin, a chemical that makes a person feel happier.
Antidepressants help by adjusting the neurochemical signaling in the brain. This change helps to reduce depression, but since these same brain chemicals are related to other mental health conditions, people could find themselves feeling more stress, more anxiety, and more panic from the antidepressant.
And keep in mind: It's normal to have side effects when starting an antidepressant. Common side effects include fatigue, changes in sleep and appetite, and concentration problems. And all of these can make you feel like you're getting worse, instead of better.
Some antidepressants can also cause feelings of agitation, restlessness and detachment. These feelings may resemble symptoms of anxiety and may add to, rather than relieve, feelings of hopelessness and despair. Some people may become suicidal or violent.
Kramer gives many anecdotes of patients who, when given Prozac, end up faring “better than well.” Not only do their depression symptoms abate, but they experience higher self-esteem and great social ease for the first time in their lives.
Expert: "It looks like a lot of what gives people relief is that they're feeling whatever the opposite of neuroticism is." (Health.com) -- People who take antidepressants such as Paxil often say they feel less stressed and more outgoing, lively, and confident.
If you keep taking your medicine, there is a good chance that you will start to feel less depressed and that the side effects will decrease. Most people feel that the benefits of antidepressants are well worth the price of living with some side effects.
SSRIs are usually the first choice medicine for depression because they generally have fewer side effects than most other types of antidepressant.
There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to telling people at work about your mental health condition. Whether you choose to tell others can depend on how much your condition affects your role, the amount of support you have outside the workplace and your relationships with your colleagues.