Sonia Gray

Daryl Lee sees a lot of what she calls avoidance loops.

School refusal, social withdrawal, or just shrinking their world right down.

And these medications, the SSRIs, can help with that initially, but they're not fixing the root problem.

So how can a young person and their parents sift through all the information and decide whether they might benefit from a trial of SSRI medication?

And the time it takes for an SSRI to do what it's supposed to do can be four to six weeks of continuous use.

For some people, it's up to three months before they feel the full benefit.

There is an initial increase in serotonin, but the real work is in restarting the brain's maintenance crew, allowing it to physically repair and rewire the networks that have been damaged by stress and by cortisol.

Of course, the brain has to be receptive to change.

And if someone's been under chronic stress for long periods, clinicians sometimes need to hold off on therapy until the medication has had a chance to work.

But every situation is unique.

And regardless of what the data says, psychiatrists, like Darrell Lee, lean on their experience.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And the complicated thing is that, you know, SSRIs are great and they work really well for some people, but you don't necessarily know by looking at someone whether this particular SSRI is going to be right at this dose for you.

And so it is a process.

So you might not know the answer to this.

We might not know the answer.

But long-term effects, that's something I always think about.

Do we have any data on what happens in 50 years?

Yes.

But in the same breath, we do have to acknowledge that they do have a place and in some cases they save lives.