Medication

Understand antidepressant medications, how they work, and what to expect. These articles cover different types, side effects, and working with your GP to find the right treatment.

About Antidepressant Medications

How antidepressants work, what side effects they have, and why they're usually just one part of treating depression.

Diagnosing Depression

Depression can be tricky to diagnose because symptoms overlap with other conditions, so doctors need to rule out physical causes first.

Drug Interactions

When you take multiple medications together, they can interact in ways that reduce their effectiveness, cause side effects, or become dangerous.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)

ECT uses electrical stimulation to trigger brief brain seizures and treat severe depression, though how it works remains unclear.

Herbal Medicines

Herbal medicines like St. John's Wort can help with mild depression, but talk to your doctor first about side effects and drug interactions.

Is Medication Right for My Depression?

Whether medication is right for you depends on your depression severity, health conditions, and other medicines you take.

Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors

MAOIs are older antidepressants reserved for when other treatments don't work, raising brain chemicals that regulate mood and sleep.

Mood Stabilisers

Mood stabilisers are medications that help even out extreme mood swings in bipolar disorder by reducing how often and how severe they happen.

Nutritional Supplements

Natural supplements like St. John's Wort may help ease depression symptoms, but sorting through claims to find what actually works takes research.

SSRI Related Antidepressants

How SSRIs and related antidepressants like SNRIs work in your brain and what side effects to expect.

Tricyclic Antidepressants

Tricyclic antidepressants block serotonin reabsorption to ease depression and anxiety symptoms, though they're not suitable for everyone.

Tricyclic Related Antidepressants

Tricyclic-related antidepressants like tetracyclics work by affecting brain chemicals to treat depression, with side effects that often improve over time.

Types of Antidepressant Medications

Different types of antidepressants work in various ways to treat depression by changing how your brain uses chemicals.