Can Anxiety Disorder Medication Do More Harm Than Good?
Although medication provides short-term benefits for treating Anxiety Disorder, long term application of these medications may do more harm than good. Typically, many health practitioners depend on administering medication for alleviating symptoms of Anxiety Disorder for immediate relief. However, if the treatment persists for years, the patient may experience many undesirable side effects instead of possible benefits.
Traditionally, the medications used to treat Anxiety Disorder involve conventional anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants, etc. These medications offer real benefit to alleviate the severe symptoms of anxiety disorder. The relief to the patients is however, short term. Since, these medications have strong addictive property, no administration is recommended without proper supervision of doctors. The severity of the patient’s condition and sub-types, will dictate how the doctors plan to administer these medications, either short term or long term.
Side Effects in Short Run
Not only in the long-term usage, anti-anxiety medication also offers short-term side effects as well. These side effects may involve nausea, dry mouth, vomiting, considerable weight gain, headaches, sexual dysfunction, dizziness and stomach upset. Long-term administration may lead to development of withdrawal symptoms due to its addictive nature. In such case, detoxification treatment becomes necessary for the patient and during that phase, relapse is too common among most of the patients.
Side Effects in Long Run
Drug dependence has turned out to be a serious concern for treating Anxiety Disorder. Prolonged usage of benzodiazepines may lead to extreme drug dependence. If administered even for few weeks, the undesired drug tolerance condition is developed. This means, the patient needs higher amount of dosages to get the same relief from their symptoms compared to the past administration. Since the dependence on this medication develops, it turns out to be difficult to end the administration of this medication.
Withdrawal
Withdrawal Part should be taken into Consideration for Benzodiazepines. If a patient suddenly stops taking his medication, he will experience extreme withdrawal symptoms including insomnia, recurrent anxiety, and irritability. So, it is very important to look for medical guidance if the time comes to withdraw the medication.
Not only with the benzodiazepine group, withdrawal is also common with the SSRI group as well. The common withdrawal symptoms involved in such cases are depression, severe anxiety, dizziness, fatigue, memory impairment and nausea.
Similar to any other over-the-counter medications, anti-anxiety drugs have serious side effects, which may vary from one individual to another. So it is very important to understand the common side effects of the medications before administering them to the patient. On the other hand, side effects may have different degrees. It can range from mild to severe, depending on the drugs administered. Sometimes the intensity of the anxiety disorder turns out to be so several, that its needs to be alleviated far outweigh the possible adverse side effects of medication.
