Not looking forward to seeing Psychiatrist

[Coppernob]

I have an appointment at the mental health clinic this afternoon for my third visit to see a Psychiatrist there. He only sees me every 2 or 3 months and he really scares me. He just wants me to take more and more meds and, although mirtazapine gave me my appetite back and helped me sleep it has, if anything, increased my anxiety. My GP has agreed to me reducing the dose but I know the psychiatrist is not going to be in agreement and will either try to take it up again or put me on something else.

He just doesn't seem to believe what I say to him about the side effects and that I prefer to be on fewer meds rather than more. Hope I can stand up to him, I don't want to stop going there as I keep hoping they'll offer me therapy of some kind and getting anything on the NHS is a miracle. Most people I know get no further than their GP with depression and anxiety and at least I got to this clinic (via A&E originally).

[Punkachoo]

Good luck today. Hope everything goes well and you don't have more medication pushed on you and you can get the help you need. Fingers crossed for you.

[Coppernob]

Well, that turned out to be quite an interesting session with the psychiatrist, he had a trainee with him who was lovely and that put me at ease a bit. Anyway, I told him rather defensively that I was trying to reduce the mirtazapine, because at 45mg it had definitely increased the anxiety, and even at 30mg it was not doing much for it, and he said that 15mg is likely to be better for anxiety than the higher doses because it acts more as a sedative at that dose to calm things down, whereas the higher doses are more for depression and can cause some agitation. He was quite happy for me to come down to just 15mg a day - but then he started trying to persuade me to go on pregabalin as well.

I managed to resist - I've got enough to think about reducing one drug at the moment and have to give that a chance at the new dose before I try to add in anything else. So he gave me a web link to investigate pregabalin and said just give him a ring if I decide I do need something else for the anxiety.

So not too bad, and I fought my corner quite well. Have to see how it goes now.