Is Medication the Right Choice for My Teen’s Depression?
Depending on the severity of your teenager’s symptoms, doctors and psychiatrists can prescribe mental health medication to help improve their mood. Antidepressants can help teenagers feel better and stop depression from affecting their lives. Yet, there can be side effects to mental health medication.
How Can Medication Help?
Antidepressants work to manage chemicals in your teenager’s brain to help them feel better. Most times it will take a couple weeks to see improvement (if the medication prescribed is the right fit for your teen).
Why Not Just Take Medication?
Mental health medication can be wonderful! But it alone cannot solve all problems. Just because your teenager’s mood improves does not mean that all the problems in their life disappear. Counselling can fill the void that medication cannot. In counselling sessions, your teen can unpack and explore their experience, find solutions to problems they are experiencing, and have support from a professional.
Can Counselling Alone Help?
You do not need to take mental health medication to get better! Medication is just one option of many. Sometimes a teenager needs mental health medication, sometimes therapy, and sometimes a combination of both.
Meet Jules Smith
Jules Smith, MEd, RCT, CCC, is a therapist based in Halifax who supports teens facing depression, anxiety, and other life challenges by helping them make sense of their experiences, strengthen self-awareness, and create meaningful change.
