Medication management is an art form to the best psychiatrist. The ideal is to have a precise and correct diagnosis and the correct medication at the lowest dose necessary. This can be hard to achieve in a rushed clinical setting that makes that kind of accuracy and precision difficult. Complicating that is the inexperience and lack of training of many "prescribers." The lack of clarity and even misdiagnosis of a patient means that the choices of medicines will be incorrect. A tell-tale sign that you may have the wrong diagnosis is that you are on more than two medications for one diagnosis. Because antidepressants, for instance, are only effective in 27% of cases, it is standard practice to "augment" with another medication to boost the effect. If you are on more than that, you need to ask the "prescriber" why. It is not uncommon for Newtown TMS to take on a new patient who is on several medications. We've seen as many as 10! Once we've properly diagnosed them, the patients wind up on the correct medicine. With the correct diagnosis a patient may go from several medications that don't work, to one or two that work very well and most of the time, with fewer side effects. With the right medications and breakthrough treatments like TMS, even the most treatment resistant depression can be helped and lives transformed.
