Do SSRIs help for anxiety?

[sugarandcyanide]

I'm really struggling with anxiety at the moment. I'm having a difficult time with stress from various life situations and the anxiety is starting to cause physical symptoms that are making me feel ill.

I wake up every morning with a racing heart and feeling of dread. I've got an upset stomach all the time and it's really starting to affect my life. I am constantly on edge and feel like I have this internal restlessness that I can't switch off. I think I also have ADHD which doesn't help with the racing thoughts and constant rumination.

I've always been an anxious person but generally I can cope until something happens that causes worry. Will SSRIs help when most of my anxiety is related to life situations that I can't change?

My mum takes them and said I need to try them as she feels so much better, but for the first few weeks she has bad side effects.

Propranolol can be very effective for anxiety.

It's not an ssri tho.

Yes, the only side effects I had was being very thirsty the first couple of weeks. My husband had bad side effects but on a different one and it varies from person to person!

You say you're constantly on edge and that is something I definitely found Sertraline helped with. When you're hypervigilant all the time it's exhausting and doesn't leave you energy for anything else so that's where I found it helpful - when I wasn't on edge all the time or not the same extent, it cleared my mind to a point and I was able to better focus on the things I needed to deal with.

It wasn't a fix-all but I was able to come off it again within a very reasonable timeframe.

As PP said though, it may be that propranolol might be more helpful to help with your racing heart etc.

Yes. They can help for a variety of things.. I take Venlafaxine for depression, my son takes Sertraline for severe OCD and my Mil takes Venlafaxine for anxiety.

Citalopram literally changed my life, OP. I was experiencing the same as you, real life stress inducing my anxiety. But after 2 weeks on these tablets, my mind was… silent? The physically symptoms started easing over the weeks and that feeling on your chest when you wake up literally disappeared. I’d never be without SSRI’s now - and I was so against going on tablets (for no good reason).

Anxiety is the worst.

Yes, I find sertraline helpful for anxiety. Recently started taking it again, and thankfully no adverse side effects other than feeling slightly more thirsty.

Yes. Sertraline has helped my anxiety quite a bit. It hasn't eradicated it, but it has become much better.
I felt physically ill when my anxiety was at its highest. But that has died away. And in fact my blood pressure gradually came down from a rather dangerously high average over the first several months on sertraline.
According to a pharmacist it can have this effect, but only if the high BP is caused by anxiety rather than by something else.

Some SSRIs are better than others for anxiety so make sure you discuss your needs with the prescribing practitioner.

you could try buspirone from your doctor, it’s not an antidepressant and can be stopped when you feel better.

Thank you all for your replies, I think I need to try them even if it's just short term.

Sertraline were a massive help for my anxiety. However they did kill my libido pretty much stone dead and made me feel quite emotionally flat- so I didn’t really experience highs of emotion. But overall they were worth it for me because the anxiety was so debilitating.

That was about ten or so years ago. I was on them for a year or so and then weaned off them very slowly. Recently I started getting the first-thing-in-the-morning dread you describe. Waking up with a racing heart and sense of panic and the feeling that I just couldn’t face the day. It turned out to be a perimenopause symptom this time so I am on HRT now and that has worked wonders. Not sure how old you are so might not be relevant but mentioning just in case.

SSRI's are thought to work by altering the ratios of neurotransmitters in the brain, but the effect that they have and the side effects that they produce really vary from individual to individual. Overall they have a pretty low success rate, but they do work for some people.
If you have the time watch Georgia Ede on youtube, her talk 'What is metabolic psychiatry?' is really interesting. She is a psychiatrist and goes over how and why psychiatric medications work. Most interestingly she uses nutritional interventions in her practice and she explains how and why these work, also by the impact diet has on brain chemistry and levels of neurotransmitters. It is a 60 min talk and well worth watching to learn more about how the brain works and how brain health can be influenced by nutrition.

It sound a bit out there, a special diet for mental health, but if SSRIs work by altering neurotransmitters, and diet also impacts neurotransmitters, then diet can impact mental health.

Best wishes!

My husband thinks this might be a factor. I'm not quite 40 yet but my mum had an early menopause.

I've had times like this my whole life though, it's just that I can't seem pull myself out of it this time. Life just seems to be bringing more challenges as we get older!