Posted by med_empowered on September 28, 2005, at 3:47:42
In reply to Re: Anxiety » Phillipa, posted by Emily Elizabeth on September 28, 2005, at 1:01:12
hey! It could be a couple things. Some people respond really well to SSRIs (and other antidepressants) when dealing with anxiety and/or depression. Some people have an partial response; some people have no response, and some people experience bad side effects. Lexapro is purified celexa, so you get celexa (which is probably one of the "cleanest"--most selective--antidepressants available) minus some side effects; the overall result is an effective, well-tolerated medication. So..in your case, it sounds like the antidepressant is having a fast and very helpful effect on your anxiety. It could be that your anxiety will be *reduced* on lexapro, but not *eliminated*. Depending on just how bad your anxiety is now, and just how bad this "touch of anxiety" affects your functioning, you may decide to add another medication, increase the lexapro dosage (keep in mind this may well lead to extra side effects w/o an increase in benefits...or it may prove to be very effective) or simply accept this new, lowered level of anxiety. Its really a matter of how your remaining anxiety affects your functioning: if you feel kind of anxious, but you can socialize, go to work, go to school, handle your life without undue stress, I'd say keep everything where it is, and focus more on self-help and/or therapy (cognitive behavioral therapy combined with antidepressants seems to be very effective for a lot of people). If the remaining anxiety is still pretty intense, but tends to be short-lived, you might want to consider an as-needed benzo (your doc will help with this) or something like Buspar, which could help with underlying depression while also helping anxiety (keep in mind: buspar doesn't work for everyone, and some people do find the side-effects intolerable). If you give the lexapro another couple weeks, you'll see (more or less) the full effects; after about 6-8 weeks, an SSRI has had time to work its therapeutic action, so you'll know for sure by then just how effective this treatment will be for you (lexapro, by the way, tends to work a bit faster than other SSRIs; that said, I'd still give it a bit longer before you come to any definite conclusions about how effective it is, unless you're having side effects). Good luck!
poster:med_empowered
thread:560355
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