Know more about anxiety medication

Before we discuss anxiety medication, let us see what anxiety really means? Today, anxiety is one the most common mental illness in the world. Anxiety is seen in various degrees in the patients. It is a state where the person affected shows issues in his emotional and behavioral state, just because of his anxiety. In layman terms, a person suffering from anxiety will become anxious at even the slightest of issues. In the cases when the person is suffering from extreme anxiety, he may even refuse to be socially active. To treat these problems, doctors prescribe anxiety medication.

Although medications are known to provide relief from anxiety, it lasts only for a short period of time. To ensure long term achievements, non-medication methods are used to treat the anxiety. To treat anxiety, there are several options available in the market today. You can opt for the traditional drugs for anxiety, for example benzodiazepines. Or you can go for newer types like using anti depressants. But these all choices depend entirely on your doctor and kindly follow all his instructions. You must remember that all these anxiety medications provide only a temporary relief. Once you stop taking these medications, all your anxiety problems will come back.

It is better to opt for exercise, therapy or even better, self help strategy until and unless your doctor says that you have severe anxiety and need medication. I am saying so because no matter how effective the medicine is, it always has some side effects. Most of the anti anxiety medications work by reducing the activity inside your brain. This provides excellent temporary relief like during a panic attack but it also has side effects like drowsiness, clumsiness, lack of energy, slower reflexive movements, depression, confusion etc. These medications also have high chances of making the patient dependent or worse, addictive. Also, paradoxical effects have also been seen in some cases, where patients have complained of side effects like mania, hallucination, hostility, rage and aggressive or impulsive behavior.

Therefore, the newer drugs are more preferred now as they have less chance of addicting or making the patient dependent. The most common drugs which are used nowadays are generally anti depressants. But anti depressants don’t provide immediate relief. They work and show effect a period of time. So you should not depend on them in case of emergencies. These relatively better anti depressants have their own set of side effects like nausea, headaches, weight gain, sleepiness, sexual dysfunction etc.

Therefore try not to succumb to the immediate relief of anxiety medication and opt for more wholesome and long term approaches.