Hi guys, I've been on Sertraline for like, a year and a half going as high as 125 mg a day. I'm still having anxiety, and I'm being switched to Prozac. I was reading a lot of clinical studies saying that young adults and teenagers can experience suicidal thoughts when taking the medicine. I'm terrified, because I'm afraid that I'm going to start being suicidal and not tell anyone, and then end up killing myself or something. Can anyone give me some reassurance? I start the transition next week.
I have been on a generic version of Prozac (apo-fluoxetine) for almost a year. I have not had any suicidal thoughts since being on the medication and it has really helped with my anxiety. Medication affects people differently. Tell your doctor if you start feeling that way and I am sure they will find an alternative that will work for you. <3
The problems you describe are well documented, but appear in only a small segment of teen users, and the product has been on the market for over 20 years. If the problem were significant, Prozac would have been discontinued or at least restricted from prescribing to adolescents... and there's been no such restriction. So likely, these symptoms won't affect you. If you start noticing any new signs of depression or self-harming thoughts, get in touch with your treating physician immediately. Fortunately, Prozac tends to more "take the edge off" than to have a really profound effect at least at most dosages, so you would likely notice a trend of your thoughts moving toward depression before any severe thoughts started to occur. I wish you success in trying this new medication. Anxiety is a miserable thing and I hope you'll find this new medication to be helpful to you in gaining better control over your emotions.
For any medication the side affects listed are anything that a patient experienced while taking the drug during it's trial phase. So there may or may not be a corrilation between Prozac and suicidal thoughts, but because part of the trial group had these symptoms. That's one of the reasons it seems a lot of medicine have a million side affects. They may not actually be caused by the drug, but for liability reasons the company has to say that side effects may include....
I made this switch, and sadly, for me, my suicidal thoughts have increased, but it may not be a result of the prozac. I'm on another medication that has the same potential side effect, and I haven't had my prescription updated in a while.
Except that with Prozac, the side effects weren't originally disclosed by the manufacturer during the trials, and were not originally part of the warning notices and side effects. It was only after a bunch of young people committed suicide while on the drug after the drug had been officially released, and there was an extremely strong correlation to the drug as the causal factor (meaning, people were suddenly suicidal who never had been before, and there were not other intervening factors) that the problem was tied directly to Prozac. The other issue is that originally, Prozac was never tested with teens, and so there was no data on safety or efficacy with teenagers. The manufacturer did have some data to indicate there might be a risk, but didn't disclose it initially. That said, it is, as I said above, a relatively small percentage of people that have this response. Now that doctors know to screen for it and warn patients about it, the problem has been minimized, and patients are generally taken off of it at the first signs of worsening depression or thoughts of self-harm.
Sertraline is Zoloft, correct? I slept for 10-11 hours on it when I came out. I switched to Prozac, and the worst I found is that I couldn't sleep well. I also had a lot of dental work, and I found I couldn't get numbed up. In regards to climaxing, it took forever. Definitely never had any homicidal or suicidal thoughts, but everyone is different.
Thanks for the comfort Chip and everyone else who replied, I'm sure I'm just freaking out over nothing (Thanks anxiety!) I mean, I've been on Sertraline for a long time and nothing has happened except for mood swings when switching dosages. Thanks everyone! Back to studying for my calculus final (procrastination is a b**ch) ---------- Post added 19th Mar 2017 at 08:40 PM ---------- Your user title made me chuckle, clever! Thanks for the reassurance, too.
I'm on sertraline but I'm not sure it's helping. It stops me from having extreme emotions but doesn't really help me function. I'm gonna ask my Dr what else I could take but based on the other posts I'm steering clear of prozac. I was suicidal before sertraline and I don't want to go back to feeling that way.
