At first, I didn’t want to take medication because I thought I would become dependent on it. Once I was told that it was not addictive and I knew I wouldn’t have to stay on it forever I felt better. Letting kids know what’s going on is very important. It makes everything less scary.
Tell your doctor
Take the medication you are prescribed exactly as your doctor tells you. If you had strep throat, chances are that you would take the prescribed antibiotics as directed. That’s not to say you definitely won’t experience any uncomfortable side effects, and if you do, be sure to tell your doctor. A good psychiatrist will listen attentively to you when you speak, both about possible side effects from medication as well as to your thoughts and feelings. If he or she seems to be paying closer attention to the clock ticking off the fifty minute session than to you, find another doctor. You deserve better.
Getting it right
You can’t get medicines right on the first try. It takes a while. Sometimes people (parents and kids) give up about medicine because you can’t always get it right at first. I was too slow because I was on a lot of medicine. Then I got taken off some of my medicine. Then I was a lot quicker. One medicine was actually making me more angry, but I got taken off of that. Now I’m on, I believe, the perfect medicine. You just have to be patient with it.
Depression is a Medical Illness
If you have experienced it, you know that depression is as real, painful and dangerous as many other illnesses. But because it is not visually apparent or measurable by a blood test, you may begin to question why you are unable to will it away if only you would try hard enough. But often, depression does have a physiological component to it. In the same way diabetics cannot will their pancreas to regulate their blood sugar levels, most clinically depressed people cannot simply will their brain to better regulate their mood. Your brain is as much a physical organ as a pancreas or a heart; it might require medication for it to function better.