Sunday, February 1, 2009

Getting Off of Depression Drugs

By John Stephan Laney

Today, without seeing a psychiatrist or mental health professional, millions of people are being prescribed anti depressant drugs. Their medical doctors prescribe drugs without requiring talk therapy. The drugs, and lifelong dependence on them, may be entirely unnecessary.

Do you absolutely need antidepressants to deal with your depression? When faced with a diagnosis of depression, this is a question we must consider. Given that anti depressants have side effects, we want to be careful about taking them.

The answer is not simple, because depression is not simple. There are several forms of depression, and varying degrees as well. A few types of depression may only be treatable with drugs. Your doctor would know.

But for most depression symptoms, you may not need drugs at all. Or, if you do need drugs, you won't need them for very long - six months at most. If you see your medical doctor and do get prescribed antidepressants, ask how long you will likely need them. If they say longer than six months, be sure to get a second opinion from a therapist.

So if you have been taking drugs for more than six months and want to see about getting off of them, one simple thing you can do is begin to get talk therapy. The vast majority of depression responds well to just a few sessions of talk therapy.

There are unpleasant side effects to antidepressant drugs. These include loss of sex drive, sleep disruption and weight gain. Therefore it is worth trying to avoid dependence upon them.

You can reduce the time you are on antidepressants either by talk therapy, and or alternative natural remedies. Employing these it shouldn't take long to start feeling much better about yourself.

There are some other methods of curing most types of depression from home. These involve self talk techniques and nutritional supplementation. You may be able to speed your depression help by find out more about them. - 16004

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