Catalyst Psychiatry’s philosophy of empowering change within for your best life, may include medication recommendations. Medications can be an important tool in treating mental illness. It is important to understand that medications will not fix the problems in your life that you are dealing with such as a bad marriage or stressful job. What medications can do is improve your resiliency to deal with those life stressors in a more productive way. For this reason, medications when coupled with therapy is even more effective. We always encourage patients to use all tools at their disposal to treat their symptoms by combining medication with therapy.

Medications are suggested based on your unique history, symptom cluster and desire to minimize side effects that you would find most bothersome. We discuss your specific goals for treatment and use validated tools such as the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for depression and Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS) for ADHD to monitor your progress.

Often several medications may be an option for you. These medication choices will be fully discussed with you including risks, possible side effects and what benefits you might expect. We believe having you fully engaged in choosing a medication is important.

We recommend FDA approved and well proven medications as first line treatment. However, there may be occasions where using a medication “off label” (meaning FDA approved for use in the U.S. but not approved for the specific problem we are targeting) will be recommended. If a medication is being used off label, we will let you know.

Sometimes patients come to Catalyst Psychiatry in Corvallis, Oregon with a desire to taper off and discontinue medications. If this is the case, we will discuss with you the potential risks of stopping medications and what withdrawal symptoms you might experience. We can suggest a safe taper schedule and closely monitor you while you taper.

Whether you choose to take medications or not, the decision will be solely yours. At Catalyst, we never push people to take medications if they feel it is not in their best interest to do so.