Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Depression Help - Stop Taking Antidepressant 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.

If you are taking antidepressants and want to get off of them, one thing you can do is to make sure you are getting talk therapy along with the drugs. Most depression symptoms are significantly reduced by simple talk therapy.

Antidepressants can have serious side effects, like weight gain, problems with sleep, and depressed sex drive. Because of these, you definitely want to avoid lifelong dependence on them if you can.

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.

Additionally, there are some ways to cure many forms of depression from home, without expensive psychotherapy or drug dependence. These involve simple nutritional support and learning more emotional intelligence.

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