Escitalopram - anyone had a similar experience?

[Wispywoo123]

And what did improvement look like to you?

DD19 has been on it for seven weeks - two weeks at 10mg and five weeks at 20mg.

Severe anxiety (freeze response), overthinking, self loathing, low mood. She says she feels her anxiety is lowering, but her mood is the lowest it has ever been and she feels constantly on the edge of a manic episode. She's still overthinking madly and feels this is contributing to her agitation.

I'm not even overly convinced her anxiety is lowering - it certainly isn't from what I can see.

Psychiatrist thinks we should stick with it for another month and I'm inclined to agree.

I guess on the plus side it is clearly having AN effect and part of me wonders if in reducing the anxiety it is focusing her mind on other things such as the overthinking? I'm not sure which comes first - the overthinking or the anxiety.

The difficulty is I'm not sure that she is able to articulate clearly how she's feeling, so that makes it harder to judge if it's helping or not.

So I'm not sure what I'm asking - maybe has anyone else been through a similar process and have a message of hope? Is it clearly the wrong medication for her? Or too early to say?

Hi OP, if you get the book ‘Mind over Mood’ by Christine Padedsky, it tells you how all the cycles work in the brain, how our thoughts lead to our feelings which lead to our actions. It’s like the known ‘gold standard’ workbook for treating depression. Even if she won’t engage with it, it will be super useful to you to upskill yourself and feel more able to help her. I wish my mum had done the same at the same age.

@FionaSkates that's so useful, thank you. Does it tackle anxiety as well?

It's interesting, I was talking to DD about how her thoughts affect her feelings but I didn't really have an answer for what that meant next.

Yep anxiety as well. It’s a good one