how do you know if medication is working or not?

I am taking prozac for social anxiety/depression and its hard to tell if its working or not ( sometimes it feels like its working,sometimes it doesnt). how do you know if meds are working?

hi josh ,
it takes about two -four weeks for your body to get used the meds cuz it's new to your system and it will take about four - six weeks for the therapeutic effects to kick in .give your meds a chance to work . you will know if its working or not by watching out for side effects of the meds .










Diagnosis: Anxiety and depression
meds : Cymbalta 60 mgs at night
Vistrail 2 25 mgs daily for anxiety prn
50 mgs at night for insomnia with an additional 25 mgs=75 mgs when up past 1:00 in the morning

From my experience, you know meds are working when you start feeling different or more "normal" or your behaviors/thoughts are starting to change.

For me, it was my MH nurse who noticed the change first (Although he did not tell me until I figured it out on my own). I noticed a difference two weeks after he did. I was calmer, my head was less foggy, my sh and sui thoughts dropped in frequency, I was sleeping well, I felt slightly more capable. Some things haven't changed for me though, l still don't take daily showers, go out of the house much, engage with the world and I'm still escaping through sleep and my addiction.

So ... Some things have noticeably changed and I feel generally better, but there are some things it doesn't help or work for.

I'm in the same boat. About two weeks in on Prozac and i feel solid some days and just as bad as I did before other days. I guess we'll have to ride it out and see.

I'm feeling the same. I just started a new AD and some days I feel better and some I don't. I have mixed feelings about the change. Today he changed my AP so we'll see how that works. I'll give it a couple weeks and see what my mood is then.

Only time can tell.

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Honestly - sometimes it's the people around you who notice a difference way before you realize it yourself. Sometimes, especially with meds that take time to build up, the effect is so gradual that you don't realize that you are feeling better. Little by little, you start to notice that you are going out more, or have some energy coming back ... stuff like that.

...when I stop trying to jump out of moving cars, when I stop frantically running out of stores in a panic, when I stop trying to sleep in the parking lots of hospitals in case I die...then I know the meds are working.

Not trying to sound sarcastic or funny. It's just very obvious when I'm off meds or on the wrong ones.

I agree with the above poster who mentioned others noticing before you. A lot of times, the people who are around you frequently and/or the ones you are close to notice first, i.e. you're less irritable, engaged more, smile more, less moody etc. Most of the effects of SSRIs are apparent within the first 1-2 weeks, with full therapeutic potential being reached at 4-6. I don't know how far you've been taking it, but maybe try asking others around you if they notice a difference?

What I did was, in my journal, I kept track of every single small success. We're talking; I showered today, I got the mail today, I got my prescriptions today, I worked out and showered and ran errands today. This was the easiest way for me to see that I was improving, the fact that I was no longer laying in bed every single day staring at the wall, but actually doing something, even if I started with the very simple, at the very beginning. I also made a point of rating my depression and anxiety symptoms on a scale of 1-10 every day. It wasn't a linear improvement by any means, but I could see over time, that there were more lower numbers than really high ones.

Take care.