Medication Management

What is medication management for mental health?

Medication management focuses on using medications to treat patients with mental health disorders. These medications include:

• Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
• Serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs)
• Neuroleptics (antipsychotic medications)
• Mood stabilizers
• Anticonvulsant medications
• Tricyclic antidepressants
• Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
• Anti-anxiety medications such as benzodiazepines
• Stimulants

Psychopharmacological drugs act on the chemicals in your brain. In some cases, the exact way they work isn’t clear, but many affect your neurotransmitters. These brain chemicals, which include serotonin and dopamine, help create links between the neurons (nerve cells) in your brain. Low levels of these neurotransmitters can severely affect your mood.

Some drugs use differing mechanisms to treat the same disorder. For example, SSRIs, MAOIs, and tricyclics are all depression medications, but they work in different ways. A skilled psychopharmacologist uses their knowledge to prescribe the drugs that are most likely to improve your condition.

Is medication management essential?

Medication management is a vital element of many patients’ treatment for mental health conditions.

Drugs can reduce the severity of your symptoms, so you get more benefits from therapy. For incurable conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, medications are essential for the successful management of your condition.

However, all medicines present certain problems that require expert medication management.

What issues does medication management address?

One issue medication management addresses is effectiveness. Finding the drug and dose with optimal effects for each patient can be challenging, as everyone responds differently. For example, some people with depression find an SSRI like fluoxetine to be highly effective. For others, the drug has little or no effect.

Using their psychopharmacology knowledge, V Psychiatry providers manage your medications to achieve the best possible results. They may try a different dose, change to an alternative class of drug, or combine several medicines.

Another problem is side effects. Any drug can have adverse effects in addition to its benefits. Some are more of an annoyance or inconvenience, like getting a dry mouth when you’re on lithium. Others can be intolerable or even dangerous. Your V Psychiatry provider aims to minimize medication side effects with their expertise in psychopharmacology.

V Psychiatry offers patients easy access to medication management in person and through secure telemedicine. Call V Psychiatry or book an appointment online today to benefit from regular medication reviews.