Thank you for your answer, it actually gave me a lot of motivation to seek for professional help seeing that it could work that well. I'm really happy it did for you.
I'm glad! I hope you will be able to get something good out of it. It did not really fix me, but I guess it did something good.
Something that confuses me a bit about whether it's really worth trying to seek help is the fact that many people, even in this post, responded that it didn't work for them or that it only works temporarily. I don't know exactly what makes it not work for people: could it be the professionals?
Short answer: people are different, their problems are different and different things work for them.
Slightly longer answer:
Sometimes it is, indeed, the fault of the "professional". Some are not competent enough. Some are, in some way biased and misdiagnose people, and give them inappropriste treatment. Eg. First psychiatrist I saw diagnosed me with BPD, ONLY because she saw I self harmed. Turned out I am no close to BPD and those problems were regular textbook depression.
Sometimes the professionals are good, but it's just not obvious what will help. People have different problems - even similar symptoms might come from different causes, which require different treatments and it's not easy to distinguish them. Even one mental illness can have various different causes and potential treatments - for some people what works better for depression is medications, for others it's talk therapy. Basically: people's brains are complicated. People metabolize medications differently. They think differently. They feel differently. And mental illness is usually an interplay of many factors.
Of course there are cases that can be treated more or less easily. Probably there are also people who are uncurable, but most of the time it's the matter of finding the right things for you. There are people who are more reactive on medications than others. There are also multiple types of talk therapy (CPT, DBT, psychoanalysis, systemic therapy... And more) and, depending on nature of one's problems, life situation and personality, some of them can be more helpful than others.
Sometimes treatments stop helping after some time because life circumstances change and they are simply "not enough" anymore. Or because the cause of the issue is still there (for example if someone is in an abusive relationship, medication might help them for a while but then the problems will return because their cause is still there). Sometimes it happens that medications stop working because people's brains "adjust" to them and partially or completely stop reacting. Sometimes, a temporary improvement from treatment can make someone feel optimistic and hopeful, but when things stop actively getting better the entusiasm fades and people start noticing more subtle problems (that was kind of my case. First months after starting medicstions I was very determined because I suddendly got hope, but after some time - I simply wanted more; being "finally functional" was not enough)
I have one question about your text tho: How can I be sure that the medication I am prescribed is the right choice for me?
What I personally recommend:
1. Think about what causes you the most trouble. What could be a "symptom" in a clinical sense. Ask yourself things like - do you experience insomnia? Sleeping too much? Panic attacks? Apathy? Decreased apetite? Increased apetite? Overwhelmingly strong emotions? Emotional numbness? Loss of pleasure? Dissociation? ...etc.
Also think about what you want to get from treatment. Which of these symptoms bother you the most? What do you want to change? What side effects are you sure you want to avoid?
(for example when I was going to see a doctor, I knew I wanted to have more energy, better mood and I wanted to avoid emotional blunting. I didn't mind if it had a risk of insomnia because I was already sleeping too much and I didn't care if it worsened anxiety because I didn't experience it)
2. Research the group of medications and specific substances.
You can do it after the doctor prescribes you the med, but if you want to spare yourself time you can also research most popular substances before the first appointment.
Every medication has the substance name and the brand name (for example, the substance fluoxetine is sold under the name Prozac most commonly in the US). The brand name doesn't matter -
Search up how these substances work in practical way. Everyone reacts to psychotropic meds differently (because, again, brains are complicated and people metabolize medications differently), but there are some general patterns. How does a said medication influence things like mood, tendency to anxiety, sleepiness, apetite, energy levels? How strongly it acts on those symptoms? Does it match up with what you are struggling? Also, from the other side: what are the most common side effects? Does it have a risk of emotional numbing? Causing insomnia? Weight loss/gain? Which side effects would bother you a lot, which would you not mind?
Remember - what's good for one person might be bad for another. A med that generally makes people sleepy will most likely help someone with insomnia. But for someone with hypersomnia and very excessive tiredness - it may be unhelpful or even harmful.
To know these things.. well the simplest things you can do is just google the *substance name*. You can find forums and subreddits where people share their experiences - of course, like I said, responses are very individual. But after you browse some of that, you will be able to notice what is most common.
*If you want you can search up science research papers but that requires more effort. A single study will not give you a full picture, but if you find a meta-analysis (it's a kind of research paper that collects results from multiple studies and tries to draw conclusions) it can be helpful. Search up things like "seratraline's effect on depression", "pregabalin's effect on anxiety", "citalopram in treating insomnia" and look for academic articles.
Also ask the doctor about what you can expect. A good professional should tell you what are the most common responses to the said medication, what you can expect from it, what symptoms they lift, also what are the possible side effects.
There are medications from different groups - which have different mechanisms of action. Meds from the same group usually work in a similar way. For example, SSRIs are most commonly prescribed for depression, but there are also SNRIs that are similar but give usually you more energy and motivation. There are tricyclic antidepressants that work in a different way, they're often more effective for severe symptoms but have more serious side effects. Besides antidepressants there are mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, various groups of anti-anxiety medications...
If you know the group from which the med is from, it's easier to understand what will most likely happen.
tldr:
People react differently to different meds but there are some more common patterns.
Ask your doctor about details of the possible effects of medication.
Google the substance name and read about other people's experiences.
Research the group of meds it's from. Learn how they work.
I know it may look like a lot. You don't have to do it, and just trusting a doctor is fine. But - if you do research you have a better chance of successful recovery.
If you need help, you can send me a private message. I'm not a doctor and I can't give "proper" medical advice, but I researched psychotropic medications a lot (for myself and for other people)
