The Right Medication Can Provide
Stability and Safety
If you are stricken with a severe case
of mental condition, such as
schizophrenia, and in danger of harming
yourself or others, you’ll benefit from
psychotropic medications. The medication
can stabilize your thoughts and prevent
you from causing harm to yourself or
those around you. However, you will need
close supervision and monitoring to note
improvements, as well as side effects.
Changes are bound to happen; these may
require a change in the prescription in
terms of medication, dosage or time
interval within the treatment period or
in the course of a lifetime.
Medications Can Support Other
Treatment
There are psychiatric conditions that
are treatable, but may require the
combination of other therapies. Such
would be difficult to administer when
you are in a stage of “psychiatric
crisis.” Medications can stabilize your
thoughts and moods so you’ll be able to
make a progress in your other therapies.
If you have a treatable condition, you
can look to better days with medication
combined with other therapies. But
first, it is important to make those
therapies possible.
Right Prescription and Monitoring
Psychotropic medications may or may not
treat psychological disorders for good,
but they can make you feel better,
making treatments and therapies
possible. Without medications for some
psychiatric issues, getting better may
be impossible. The case may even spiral
into more severe and disabling symptoms.
Many people’s lives struggling with
mental/behavioral conditions have been
changed with the right medications and
monitoring.
This is why you need a psychiatrist or
psychiatric nurse practitioner to help
you get the right prescription, to be
medically managed and monitored, and so
you’ll be able to live a fulfilling
life. This is what
Living Well Behavioral Care in
Knightdale, NC
on McKnight Drive expertly does. Make your first appointment, your
first step to right psychotropic
medications and more satisfying life.
Psychotropic Medications are to Help
INCREASE, Not Decrease Ability to
Function
Psychotropic medicines are compounds
that affect the functioning of the mind
or the mental processes through
pharmacological or chemical action on
the brain. The use of these drugs can be
necessary when a psychiatric health
issue is causing significant impairment
in your normal functioning. These
include antidepressants, tranquilizers
and hallucinogens.
The primary intent of these medicines is
to promote or increase healthy
functioning. Yet, some of these
psychotropic medicines may pose risks
because of side effects. This looming
possibility underscores the importance
of medical guidance from a qualified
professional, such as a psychiatrist or
a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
How Psychotropic Medications Work
Psychotropic medicines work by altering
or balancing the quantity of essential
compounds in the brain called
“neurotransmitters. There are certain
psychiatric conditions that respond well
to these neurotransmitters, namely
serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine
that control thoughts, emotions and
behaviors.
For instance, antidepressants (agonists)
can increase the levels of your
serotonin and norepinephrine, so your
mood is stabilized. Neuroleptics
(antagonist), on the other hand, may
inhibit or block dopamine, which is
unusually elevated in people with
schizophrenia. Psychostimulants are
drugs that can function both, as an
agonist or antagonist and are often used
to manage ADHD (attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder). These function
by stimulating dopamine and
norepinephrine to suppress impulsivity,
but bolster alertness and attention.
What These Drugs Do
Know, however, that these medicines are
not chemically formulated to cure
psychiatric disorders. What these
medical interventions can do is to allow
healthy mental functions to occur so
that the symptoms will become more
manageable, and so the other helpful
therapies can be administered.
There is no doubt that psychotropic
medications can increase healthy brain
functioning and deliver major benefits
in managing disturbing symptoms
attendant to mental disorders. These
beneficial drugs, however, may also
cause side effects. Since these drugs
are centrally-acting, the brain is the
first organ to be impacted if any of
these drugs is abused or misused.
Achieving the Optimal Functioning
Monitoring how these drugs affect you is
critical during the treatment period.
Certain signs and symptoms are monitored
to determine if you are responding to it
well, or if you are showing indications
of adverse effects. While the purpose is
to increase your ability to function,
the dosage may have to be regulated or
modified, or the drug is altogether
changed, when the desired results are
not observed within reasonable time.
Remember, that psychotropic drugs may
help or upset the sensitive processes
within your brain due to side effects.
This is why psychiatric disorders need
to be handled with extreme caution using
psychotropic medications. This is how
prescriptions and medication management
are handled in
Living Well Behavioral Care in
Knightdale, NC on McKnight Drive.
Call us
so we can talk better about the best
medications to help you increase your
ability to function.