Anxiety spike after almost 2 weeks on Cit

[sheslostcontrol]

Hello.

So I've been on Citalopram since last Tuesday, first 5 mg, now on 10 mg since Sunday. Things were going pretty much fine until yesterday, when suddenly, all of my old anxiety fears (mainly mental health related) came back, seemingly out of nowhere. Today I woke up feeling quite anxious and agitated, with the majority of my worries and even some of the symptoms returning.

My question is - has anyone experienced this? I'm guessing it's normal and I just need to pull through (and I will), but how long can it take before it goes away? Can it get worse over time?

Thank you very much.

Hope you're having a nice day.

[cattia]

I think from my past experience of SSRIs it takes a good four weeks for them to really have any effect on your mental wellbeing, so I would guess that it's too soon to worry yet. Definitely when I was on prozac I felt like a cloud had lifted as soon as I hit week 4. Before then it was mostly side effects.

[sheslostcontrol]

I think from my past experience of SSRIs it takes a good four weeks for them to really have any effect on your mental wellbeing, so I would guess that it's too soon to worry yet. Definitely when I was on prozac I felt like a cloud had lifted as soon as I hit week 4. Before then it was mostly side effects.

Thank you for your response.

I know how long it can take, my main worry is that I felt quite fine until yesterday, but hopefully that'll pass too.

Hope you're having a nice day.

[panic_down_under]

So I've been on Citalopram since last Tuesday, first 5 mg, now on 10 mg since Sunday. Things were going pretty much fine until yesterday, when suddenly, all of my old anxiety fears (mainly mental health related) came back, seemingly out of nowhere. Today I woke up feeling quite anxious and agitated, with the majority of my worries and even some of the symptoms returning.

Antidepressants don't begin to work immediately typically taking 3-12 weeks to kick-in. They have no direct effect on anxiety (or depression) in the way say aspirin has on a headache. They work by stimulating the growth of new brain cells (neurogenesis) to replace cells killed, or prevented from growing by high brain stress hormone levels. The therapeutic response is produced by these new cells and the stronger interconnections they forge, not the meds directly, and they take time to bud, grow and mature. For a more detailed explanation see: How antidepressant drugs act.

Also, the usual minimum therapeutic dose is 20mg/day.

Can it get worse over time?

Unfortunately, SSRIs may initially increase anxiety levels due to the extra serotonin activity. However, within a week or two the brain responds by decreasing serotonin synthesis and expression and anxiety levels begin to ease back to baseline until the med kicks-in.