Hi everyone - very grateful to find this site...

[sweetwater]

sorry nicola- i was in a rush when i read the survey...i believe it is meg who is the nurse...oops...well good for you meg!

[nomorepanic]

Yeah Meg is our resident nurse and helps us all tremendously.

Nicola

[nomorepanic]

Sweet - no more bounced emails so that is good.


Nicola

[me]

hello swee****er thankyou so so much for sending me a message it really meant alot i hope you are feeling ok ive had abit of a rubbish day very up and down but at the moment feeling ok...ish i dont know what the antidepressant was the doctor gave me the other saturday i thought it was the one i used to be on which i was fine on but it wasnt and now they have put me back on my old ones citalopram which im still not sure about but i think in the last few days ive doubted everything im also taking beta blockers and now im on a small dose of diazepam goodness i find that really scary i asked the doctors if any of these would make me be having all the panic attacks but she said no so im kinda pulling my hair out please keep in touch its so good to hear from you take care mary x

[sweetwater]

Hope you're hanging in there ok Mary. Citalopram is a SSRI antidepressant used for depresion, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)...and your dr. is right, it shouldn't give you panic attacks...anxiety/nervousness is a side effect or SSRIs, amongst other things, for the first 2-4 weeks anyhow, until your body gets used to it. If you start to have nasty panic attacks on the Citalopram, I would push my dr. to try a different class of med. There are MAOIs, and this other class chemically similar to MAOIs (ie. Parnate which is what i'm on), I think they are called RIMAs or something like that. Luvox was on that I was on for a while and it didn't do much, but it was good that i didn't have the dietary restrictions that i have now. There are also newer drugs around like Mirtazapine (trade name = Avanza)which aren't in a drug class, but work well for some people. Word of advice though- don't let your dr. treat you like a guinea pig, which is what happened to me, with a past psychiatrist. As i was unresponsive to traditional meds, she took the opportunity to try newer drugs on me, which made me worse. Luckily, the guy i see now is open minded and is ok. I find it rather amusing in some respects that I've been on so many meds, and it is the oldest, most researched, and considered one of the most effective meds that has ended up, for me, working the best. Parnate (MAOI) has been around since the 50s, along with Nardil (another MAOI)- and research has consistently shown that they work very well for social anxiety and phobias, better than SSRIs and the others. However, most people seem to respond well to SSRIs so i'm not dissing them - I just think it's almost irionic that i've been on this rollercoaster ride of meds, and in the end, we've come back to basics. Take care Mary, and keep writing in here - it's very therapeutic and it's healthy to let the thoughts out. xx.