Safest antidepressant for elderly

What is the best depression medication for the elderly? Which antidepressant is the least sedating? Should antidepressant medication be used in the elderly? Are SSRI drugs dangerous?

Choice of antidepressant Fortunately there are several antidepressants that have been shown to be efficacious in elderly patients being treated for a major depressive episode without psychotic features.

In choosing an antidepressant it is recommended that selection be based on the best side effect profile and lowest risk of drug-drug interactions. Before considering an antidepressant as an elderly person, it is important to evaluate your life. This means evaluating your condition of depression from a logical perspective. Realize that there are plenty of ways to overcome depression without meds. Late-life depression is a serious illness accompanied by medical morbidity, cognitive decline, and risk of suicide.

Antidepressant medications are a cornerstone of treatment for depressed elders. Although they are optimally provided in conjunction with psychotherapy, in many cases they are used alone.

Symptoms of depression can vary, and one antidepressant may relieve certain symptoms better than another. In regards to the health of your body, the safest antidepressant will always be one that doesn’t involve taking a pharmaceutical drug. That’s why therapies like low-field magnetic stimulation may be promising.

If you plan on going on a drug, do your own research and talk with a psychiatrist to determine what one you think is safest. In rare cases, these can exacerbate cardiac conditions like QTc prolongation. In general, we tend to avoid using these antidepressants. SSRI’s are the class of choice for initial antidepressant therapy. So even if there is a safest anxiety medicine, the problem is that your own anxiety may not be helped by that specific medication.

Furthermore, different levels of anxiety may require different types of. Vasoconstriction and consequent myocardial ischemia (Prinzmetal’s angina) has been reported in connection with SSRIs use. Researchers looked at one specific.

Remeron also has limited effects on REM sleep 1. In view of the association between elderly depression and chronic physical illness, optimising management of these conditions is important. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a safe and effective treatment for depression in the elderly that can achieve a good response in 70– of cases, though subsequent relapse remains a problem. Study found that SSRIs seemed to have more side effects than older antidepressants.

Please note: This article was published more than one year ago. And More information links may no longer work. In this era of comparative effectiveness research, it seems that we need a great deal more focus on the comparative effectiveness of these, and other, psychiatric drugs. However, there is the other side of under treatment of depression.

It is well known that antidepressants can cause hyponatremia, particularly in elderly patients. This complication can be serious, with delirium, seizure, or even death. In the classic study by Fabian et al,paroxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), was found to induce hyponatremia in of elderly patients within a mean duration of days.

The findings of urine sodium.