Anxiety Medication

For people suffering from anxiety, medication is often needed but anytime anxiety medicine is used, a doctor’s prescription is required. Sometimes, a person taking this type of medication needs to be monitored for side effects. Even when someone takes anti-anxiety drugs or tranquilizers, they need to understand that this helps but only in eliminating or decreasing symptoms of anxiety and not for treating the underlying cause of the attack. Again, some types of anxiety mediation can have bad side effects such as weight gain, dry mouth, depression, nausea, decreased coordination, impaired judgment, sleepiness, and the list goes on. Therefore, people taking the most common types of beta blockers such as antidepressants and benzodiazepines need to be under the care of a doctor.

Some of the options for benzodiazepine anxiety medication include Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin. However, these highly addictive medications can become a problem within weeks to months. The only way to eliminate risk of addiction is simply by reducing the amount of time in which the medication is taken. On the other hand, drugs in the antidepressant category are not nearly as addictive but even so, they too can cause side effects and in some cases, actually make the anxiety or panic disorder worse. In addition, antidepressants can also cause a person to feel hostile, agitated, and even suicidal.

Interestingly, some types of beta blockers commonly used to treat hypertension and heart disease are also used as anxiety medicine. In this case, the drugs help people dealing with panic disorders by decreasing the production of stress hormones, which are known to trigger the “fight or flight” response. One of the most common uses for anxiety medicine is for disorders such as performance anxiety and social phobia. Again, any medication needed for treating any anxiety health issue needs to be prescribed by a reputable doctor, one that would monitor the patient carefully.

The goal is for the patient to have a regular doctor, someone that understands his or her health history and current struggle with anxiety so the right anxiety medicine is chosen. This doctor would be able to determine the effectiveness of the drug with patient monitoring while also watching for unpleasant side effects. Now, if the patient goes to therapy for anxiety and panic attacks, the doctor involved with therapy treatment might eliminate the use of drugs. While anxiety medicine is certainly helpful, for a person to get a complete handle on the attacks, he or she needs psychotherapy to get to the real problem.