Anxiety treatment is something that is very personal to every sufferer and anyone who endures ongoing anxiety or panic attacks naturally spend a good deal of time looking for the most effective treatment to reduce their discomfort. If you are unfortunate enough to live through these dreadful attacks, your doctor will, no doubt, have already advised you of the different options for treatment. The choice of anxiety treatments probably encompasses the prescription of anti anxiety medication, mood elevating or anti-depressant medication or maybe a course of therapy. Each one of these treatments will solve your problem to some degree or other but each will have their own advantages and disadvantages. Anxiety Medication
With the ever increasing advancement if medical research, today's anti-anxiety drugs are far safer and far more effective than in previous generations. Drugs such as Valium have a well-earned reputation for being highly addictive but more modern drugs rarely have that side effect.
It is specifically to avoid this risk that courses of treatment are restricted to the short term and many physicians advise taking these medications only when experiencing a panic attack. These drugs are formulated to reduce your feelings of panic, promoting calm and thus making dealing with anxiety more manageable.
Nonetheless, it is still possible for your system to become accustomed to some anti-anxiety drugs and so become resistant to their effects as time goes on. This in turn can lead to withdrawal symptoms should a patient suddenly cease taking their medication.
These potential problems are well documented and doctors have been made very aware of the possible pitfalls. Consequently, this is another good reason for keeping the course of treatment short. But if you have been taking anti-anxiety medication for longer than a few weeks, your doctor will certainly advise you to wean yourself off the drug slowly and with a carefully controlled decrease in dosage.
Anti-Depressant Drugs
Anti-depressant drugs are often prescribed in conjunction with anti-anxiety medication as the two sets of symptoms often go hand-in-hand.
Anxiety treatment can only be successful when the root cause of the problem can be identified and dealt with and depression can often be the result of a deep-seated problem. Overcoming anxiety is frequently a challenging thing to tackle and anti-depressant medication can sometimes help ease the process. However, it is equally important to deal with the real cause of a person's anxiety as it is to ease their symptoms.
Well known brands include Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil. But do be aware that they can cause side effects that may include a dry mouth, a loss of libido and drowsiness.
These types of drugs don't offer an instant cure for your troubles either. Any of these will take some time to build the blood levels to the point of being noticeably effective. For most people, ten to fourteen days is about the amount of time before the full benefit is felt.
If you require a course of treatment longer than a few weeks, your doctor will want to monitor your liver and kidney function by ordering regular blood tests.
In spite of all this, anti-depressants can offer many people the solution they seek in overcoming anxiety. The drawbacks can be that because of the delay in delivering full effectiveness, some people conclude that their medication isn't working and so don't complete the course prescribed.
Others who do persevere and begin to see improvement then stop taking their medication in the mistaken belief that they no longer need treatment.
This course of action is not to be advised as stopping taking these drugs needs the supervision and agreement of your doctor as much as being prescribed them in the first place.
If you don't like the idea of an anxiety treatment that relies on prescription drugs, a more natural way of dealing with anxiety may be through the use of a number of therapies.
An added bonus to going down the therapy route is that it will more easily help you identify the root cause of your stress and anxiety.
Most typically, a panic or anxiety attack is sparked by a certain set of circumstances or by something fairly trivial but this may not be the real cause of your problem. Therapy sessions can offer a highly effective way of delving into the heart of the matter but it may take some time to achieve.
Its human nature to want to find an effective cure in the shortest time possible but therapy isn't really able to offer this speed. However, in a longer time frame, therapy is probably more effective at finding a permanent solution if you suffer from anxiety and panic attacks than if you simply relied on taking a course of prescribed medication.
Your physician is likely to offer you anti-anxiety medication as an initial way to bring you fast relief from your anxiety or stress. But for a more lasting solution, the root cause of your anxiety will need to be resolved and a course of therapy sessions may probably be a good route to follow.
Anti-anxiety drug treatment can definitely deliver instant relief but unless the root causes for your problems can be identified and dealt with any anxiety treatment can only be partially successful.
