Hello and welcome! I have 2 pieces of advice, the first is to keep a notebook with a record of all medications; date started, dosage, side-effects, and reasons for stopping the medication if they decide to change something. I wish I had done this, because it's been 18 years since my diagnosis and they've had me try a lot of different meds, and now I can't remember which ones I've been on or why we stopped them or what the side-effects were.

The other advice is to keep a mood diary. You can find some online, but most only give you one option for your mood or anxiety for the entire day, and if your mood and/or anxiety fluctuates a lot during the day, it's hard to pick one rating. I keep my own that I made (I just keep them in a binder) and I track my mood and anxiety 3 times a day, my energy level, meds and time I took them, wake up time, bedtime, naps, etc. Every 2 or 3 weeks I go online and create a line graph of my mood and my anxiety to be able to see the patterns. I wish I'd started doing this sooner as well, because when I get depressed for a few days it gets hard to remember when it actually started since it feels like it has been that way forever. You can rate however you want, I use a 0 - 6 scale: 0 is none/baseline, 1 is very mild, 2 is mild, 3 is mild - moderate, 4 is moderate, 5 is moderate - severe, 6 is severe.

Again, welcome, and stop by and ask questions or vent or rant or whatever, everyone has been very nice to me here