Panic attacks and Antidepressants

Panic attacks and antidepressants go together because doctors often use antidepressants to treat people with panic or anxiety attacks.

Because this affected me personally, I’ve looked into using antidepressants in some detail. I’ll tell you what I’ve found and give you my opinion in a moment, but first I have to make something clear.

I am not a psychologist much less a doctor. Anything I write on this site is only my opinion and just for informational purposes. You should never make any health or treatment decisions based only on what you find on the web--here or anyplace else. I highly recommend consulting with a both a physician and an appropriate counselor to determine what’s best for you.

Antidepressants do help a lot of people, but not every one. I actually looked at a couple of medical articles to find out what the evidence for their benefit is. The articles I looked at are what doctors call “meta-analysis” papers.

The writers of these papers evaluate all the studies that have been done on a subject, pick the ones that they think are the best, and then combine the results and analyze the data.

The hope is that by combining data and thereby getting larger numbers the results will be more valid.

The antidepressant and panic attack studies show that 60% of people who took antidepressants were better in two or three months. Some individual studies even showed benefit to as many as 75 or 80% of patients, but combined results in this "meta analysis" came to 60%

That sounds great, but 40% of the people who got the sugar pills were better over the same time.

That means that the antidepressants really only helped about 20% of the people – 40% got better on their own and 40% didn’t respond.

Helping 20% of people with something as devastating as panic attacks is certainly a good thing, but it’s not as impressive as 60%.

It also means that 80% of the people taking the medicine get no benefit from it.

This might be fine if the drugs were free and completely safe, but they’re not.

Like any medication, antidepressants have side effects.

And if they aren’t covered by your insurance, they get expensive very quickly.

On the other hand, they do help 20% of people. What to do?

Again, this is only my opinion, but I think the best thing to do is talk it over with your doctor. If they recommend antidepressants ask them why and which ones they recommend and why. Ask what results they’ve seen in their patients and what side effects might come up

Also ask how long they think you’ll be on them and what other treatments they recommend.

I think antidepressants should only be used as a short term stop-gap to help someone while they find out about and try other treatments that address the underlying issue more directly than antidepressants.

I’ve written other pages with a more detailed description of antidepressants that you can go to if you want even more info.

Types of Antidepressants Used to Treat Panic and Anxiety Attacks

Side Effect of Antidepressants Used to Treat Panic Disorders

You can also find information about other types of treatments on the following page and other pages listed to the left.

Anxiety Treatment Options

Here's an especially effective treatment:

Panic Away System