Another hurdle for many is expense. All antidepressant medications require a prescription. Also, the cost of the latest antidepressant medications can be as high as seven dollars per day. To many, this extra two-hundred and twenty dollars a month is an impossible expense. Once a patient sees a physician and is diagnosed as having depression, the treatment begins.
Treatment of depression is as much an art as it is a science.
If the treatment is based on antidepressant medications, choosing the right medication for the patient is essential. Unfortunately, the choice is not always clear. There is no way of knowing, for example, which side effects might appear in which patient taking which medication. The physician prescribes an antidepressant with the fewest side effects and relies on the patient to report the results. Alas, the side effects of antidepressant medications have caused a good number of people to abandon the treatment of depression altogether.