Important Reasons to Consider Medication Management

medication management

Important Reasons to Consider Medication Management

There’s no such thing as a magic pill when it comes to solving most mental health issues, but there are highly effective medications that can help you lead a happy and productive life. 

At Amavi Integrative Mental Wellness, our experienced team of mental health providers routinely turns to medication management for a wide range of mental health issues, from anxiety and depression to attention-deficit/hyperactivity (ADHD) disorder and psychosis. 

Medications are only part of your overall treatment plan, but they can play an essential role. Here’s how. 

Common mental health medications

Before we get into some of the benefits of medication management for your mental health, let’s quickly review the medications we’re referring to, which include:

  • Antidepressant medications
  • Antipsychotic medications
  • Anti-anxiety medications, such as benzodiazepines
  • Ketamine for depression
  • Stimulants for ADHD 

Outside of ketamine (more on this in a moment), these medications have a long history of helping people to reclaim their lives in the face of mental health issues. 

Stopping the spiral

One of the biggest advantages of some psychopharmacological therapies is their fast-acting ability to halt a downward spiral of your mental health. 

For example, if you have severe anxiety, we can prescribe benzodiazepines for a short-term fix, which allows us to work on longer-term solutions through behavioral and psychotherapies

Another good example is ketamine, a derivative of which (esketamine), was approved by the FDA in 2019 to address treatment-resistant depression. After two weeks of ketamine treatments, one study found that, “There was a significant improvement in depression, anxiety, and the severity of illness after two weeks and one month of the last dose of ketamine.” In fact, the researchers concluded that ketamine treatments have, “a robust and rapid effect on depression, which was seen immediately after the administration of ketamine and sustained at the end of one month.” 

That is a departure from antidepressant medications, which can take weeks, if not months, to have an effect. 

Long-term management of your mental health

Medications can also help you stabilize your mental health over the longer term. As we mentioned, antidepressant medications can take a little time to become effective, but once they successfully help you better regulate your moods, you can continue with these medications. 

Antidepressants work by helping you to maintain higher levels of “feel-good” chemicals in your brain, such as serotonin and dopamine. 

Over time, your neural pathways and brain chemistry will adjust, and you may be able to wean off the antidepressants, especially if you’ve been working on your mood regulation through our psychotherapies. 

Another example of a medication that provides long-term results is the stimulants we use for treating ADHD. Studies show that these medications improve ADHD symptoms in up to 70% of adults and between 70-80% of kids. Better still, these medications work quickly to remedy ADHD symptoms. 

Responsible medication management

Managing your mental health through medications isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, and we take our time in developing the best psychopharmacological solution for you.  

For example, some medications may not interact well with your brain chemistry and body and lead to unwanted side effects, at which point we can change our approach. Other mental health medications, such as benzodiazepines, are addictive, which is why we only view them as short-term solutions. 

Whenever we prescribe medications for your mental health, we monitor you very closely to ensure you’re benefiting from the treatment. In many cases, we may adjust these medications over time and even taper them if we feel that they’re no longer needed. 

That critical oversight allows you to benefit from the many effective medications available to improve your mental health. 

If you’d like to explore whether medication management is right for you, please schedule an appointment at our office in Niwot, Colorado, which also serves the Boulder and Longmont areas.

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