Psychiatric Medications Q&A

When a child or adult is admitted to an inpatient psychiatric hospital that means they are in the middle of a crisis at risk of:

• losing all their friends
• failing out of school
• refusing to attend school
• running away from home
• playing video games all day and night
• being defiant, disrespectful, not listening to authority figures

Children or adults might be:

• having explosive angry outbursts
• acting impulsively
• engaging in dangerous behaviors
• engaging in self-injurious behaviors
• experiencing suicidal thoughts

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Psychiatric medication is there to help a child be able learn the coping skills. Some behaviors and symptoms do not respond to therapy alone – if a child is having urges to harm themselves or others, or consumed by suicidal or negative thoughts, or is having explosive angry outbursts, they can’t learn or absorb or be able to use the coping skills being taught to them.

Some psychiatric illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia do not respond to therapy alone and can go stronger over time. If you wait to treat with medication, the symptoms usually worsen over time and then you need more medications and higher doses to treat the symptoms.

Psychiatric medications allow children and adults to get back to their normal healthy baseline as quickly as possible.

When someone suffers from a mental illness it means that individual has a chemical imbalance in their brain which means their brain hormones (or neurotransmitters) are not balanced.

For example, if someone is depressed, that means that individual does not have enough serotonin in their brain.

Antidepressants, however, do not just boost the serotonin in the brain, they rebalance the serotonin in the brain so ultimately many individuals may not need medication in the future.

A boost in serotonin, which occurs on antidepressants, in some children and young adults ages 24 and under can cause an increase in suicidal ideation.

That does not mean ALL antidepressants are not safe.

It does means that psychiatric medications need to be prescribed wisely!

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For psychiatric medications to work you need:

Psychiatric medications do not work like Tylenol where if you have a headache and take Tylenol you quickly, within minutes, get rid of your headache.

For example: if you are depressed, you need to reach a therapeutic dose of a medication, which could be 150mg of sertraline (Zoloft) and then, once on that dose (which might take 2 weeks), it takes another 6-8 weeks for the full effect of the medication.

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Psychiatric medications need time to build up in your system which means it takes time for them to be effective.

You might not experience full relief of your symptoms for 6-8 weeks or you might not see side effects for 5 days, 2 weeks, or even 2 months!

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Psychiatric illnesses are medical illnesses. The same way medical symptoms should not be ignored, psychiatric symptoms should also be taken seriously.

Medications help a child or adult participate in therapy and learn the coping skills.

Some symptoms only respond to medications like extreme anger and explosivity, suicidal ideation, paranoia, psychosis, hearing voices and seeing things.

For example, an individual with explosive anger outbursts needs treatment of the explosive outbursts before they can engage in individual and family therapy because the explosive anger outbursts will interfere with the therapy sessions.

Or, an individual who is hearing voices or who is paranoid cannot engage in individual or family therapy because they need to trust the clinician and family and not be hearing voices during the therapy sessions.

Important questions to ask when deciding whether medication is needed:

Click here for more of the Dr K Video Series on Psychiatric Medication