Panic Attacks and Anxiety

Medications for Anxiety-Millions Are Hooked

May 25th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

by Robert Allen Byrnes

What in the world can sufferers of unrelenting panic attacks,
generalized anxiety attacks, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder do to restore sanity to their lives! If
you are one of the 40 million or so Americans who fit any one of those
categories, stay with us to find some answers. Even in this very first
paragraph we are offering you hope, information, and direction.

Let me warn you, these tongue-twisting names may floor you, but just
remember, it’s what they do for you, not their difficulty in pronouncing
that counts. Our purpose is not to impress you with our medical
knowledge, but to help you make important decisions about your health aided by
information from the ADAA. We begin with these cautionary reminders:
anxiety medications do not cure, they reduce symptoms basically so that
other therapies may be administered; they should be used only with your
doctor’s permission and care; and it is not for you to abruptly decide
to stop any of the medications for anxiety, you do that at the
direction of your doctor.

We’ll introduce you first to the antidepressants whose function is to
alter something called serotonin, a neurotransmitter. These
antidepressant drugs are the….You can check that name with your doctor - we’ll just call them SSRIs. The three SSRIs that you probably recognize are
Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac and what they do is to treat all the disorders
listed in our first paragraph. How they do it is to increase the output
of serotonin level to the brain which should decrease your anxiety
level.

Tricyclics (TCA) are also antidepressants and these medications for
anxiety are Sinequan (Doxeprin), Anafranil, and Vivactil, which, like the
SSRIs, alter serotonin but also norepinepherine. Social anxiety is
missing from the list of disorders treated by TCAs. Of all these
classifications, SSRIs are the only ones federally approved; but generic
equivalents are available for each of them.

Finally, the MAOI which are the first or the oldest of the
antidepressants are Marplan, Nardil and Parnate, and are classified as inhibitors,because they work by blocking or inhibiting the influence of an
important brain enzyme. The MAOI are generally prescribed by doctors in the
treatment of panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and social
anxiety disorder.

Medications may be part of the therapy process either at the beginning
or introduced later if other therapy is not doing the job. And it may
be a good option for you, but it’s important to understand that
medications are effective only if taken according to your doctor’s
instructions. Please don’t neglect to make a list of questions for your doctor,
including both long term and short term side effects.

As with all of us under medication of any sort, a common fear is one of
being over-medicated to the extent of becoming addicted. Although this
fear could certainly be realized due to careless oversight of what is
happening with your anxiety medications, it doesn’t have to be. Both
you and your doctor are responsible for seeing that side effects of the
medications used are properly monitored and that the correct medications
have been prescribed.

Although this has not been a scholarlyy treatise on medications for
anxiety, now you should know that anxiety disorders are very treatable,
and should hopefully know a litttle more about what the medications are
and how they work. The good news for you anxiety sufferers is that
these interventions are very effective in bringing the relief you’re
seeking.

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