When depressed, the most likely initial recommendation that a patient would get from a doctor is to take an antidepressant. Medications like Prozac are considered the frontline treatments for clinical depression, though they are not the only options. Experts agree that medication and therapy, along with adequate support from loved ones, is the most likely combination of methods to help alleviate the condition. However, as with any medical ailment, there will always be few patients that prove difficult to treat using the best conventional methods.
When Prozac and therapy fail, there are few other alternatives. Most antidepressants prescribed today are classified as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. These are considered the frontline, but there are other options in case these fail. Two other classifications of antidepressants are in use whenever the more conventional SSRI medications prove ineffective, but there are also instances when these options also fail. Some say that by the time the patient has shown to be unresponsive to all forms of pharmaceutical intervention, they might just be desperate enough to agree to being subjected to the final resort: electroconvulsive shock therapy.
Electroconvulsive shock therapy once known as shock therapy is considered a last resort for a good reason. It can be one of the most dangerous things to consider as an alternative to Prozac, with the electrical current being run through the body and nervous system. The procedure only lasts 25 to 60 seconds, but there are a multitude of worries concerning running electrical current through the brain. Still, it manages to be more effective than anything else in modern medicine when dealing with drug-resistant depression.
In the modern incarnation of this method, the person being treated is allowed to rest comfortably. They are given an anesthetic to relieve the pain, and it usually wears off a few minutes after the procedure is over. Some confusion may be experienced after the procedure, sometimes accompanied by headache or muscle stiffness. These effects can typically wear off within an hour after waking.
By Mark Christian Walters
When Prozac and therapy fail, there are few other alternatives. Most antidepressants prescribed today are classified as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. These are considered the frontline, but there are other options in case these fail. Two other classifications of antidepressants are in use whenever the more conventional SSRI medications prove ineffective, but there are also instances when these options also fail. Some say that by the time the patient has shown to be unresponsive to all forms of pharmaceutical intervention, they might just be desperate enough to agree to being subjected to the final resort: electroconvulsive shock therapy.
Electroconvulsive shock therapy once known as shock therapy is considered a last resort for a good reason. It can be one of the most dangerous things to consider as an alternative to Prozac, with the electrical current being run through the body and nervous system. The procedure only lasts 25 to 60 seconds, but there are a multitude of worries concerning running electrical current through the brain. Still, it manages to be more effective than anything else in modern medicine when dealing with drug-resistant depression.
In the modern incarnation of this method, the person being treated is allowed to rest comfortably. They are given an anesthetic to relieve the pain, and it usually wears off a few minutes after the procedure is over. Some confusion may be experienced after the procedure, sometimes accompanied by headache or muscle stiffness. These effects can typically wear off within an hour after waking.
By Mark Christian Walters