Medication Management

What is medication management?

Medication management helps you get the most benefits from any drugs you take while avoiding unpleasant or harmful side effects.

Best Option Behavioral Health Services offers medication management reviews to patients taking psychiatric medications, which include:

• Antidepressants
• Anti-anxiety drugs
• Stimulants
• Antipsychotics
• Mood stabilizers
• Buprenorphine and other addiction withdrawal medicines

These drugs often play a vital role in easing the severity of mental health disorder symptoms. For example, if you have bipolar disorder, taking antidepressants stops your depression from reaching such severe depths, while mood stabilizers like lithium reduce the extreme nature of your mood swings.

However, taking any medication has certain risks and drawbacks that require careful management to optimize your treatment.

What problems can medication management prevent?

There are two main issues with inadequate medication management: unsatisfactory results and adverse effects.

Finding the most effective drug/s for mental health disorders is typically far more challenging than prescribing medications for physical illnesses. First, there are multiple forms of each psychiatric drug that all work in different ways.

For instance, antidepressants have three classes — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), tricyclics, and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). Within these classes are different varieties whose effects also differ.

Because people’s responses to these various medicines are unpredictable, it takes a skilled, experienced prescriber and patient perseverance to find the optimal drug and dose. Additionally, some people experience problems with certain drugs, such as nausea, diarrhea, excessive sedation, and headaches, that prevent their use.

What happens at a medication management review?

At your medication management review, your Best Option Behavioral Health Services provider reviews your medical history and discusses your current treatment. They want to know about improvements you experience and any problems or side effects that could result from your prescribed drugs.

To ensure they have a clear picture of your medication intake, your provider needs to know about other prescription medications you regularly take, like metformin for diabetes or a statin to lower your cholesterol.

These and some over-the-counter medicines, herbal remedies, and dietary supplements could interact with your psychiatric medications. This could reduce or enhance their effects or, in some cases, increase your risk of dangerous adverse reactions like serotonin syndrome.

When they have all the information they need, your provider can make any necessary changes to ensure your medicines are safe and effective.

Call Best Option Behavioral Health Services today to arrange your medication management review or book an appointment online.