Frequently Asked Questions

Medication can be very helpful for a wide range of psychiatric disorders. And one of the best-known examples is clinical depression. But there are a wide range of disorders including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), where people can get a great deal of benefit from psychiatric medication.

Most people go through periods of feeling down, but when you’re depressed you feel persistently sad for weeks or months, rather than just a few days. Some people think depression is trivial and not a genuine health condition. They’re wrong – it is a real illness with real symptoms. Depression is not a sign of weakness or something you can “snap out of” by “pulling yourself together”.


As well as a very low mood there are a range of other symptoms that go along with it. For example, feeling hopeless, sometimes feeling suicidal, and also having biological symptoms, such as loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, and the loss of libido. The good news is that with the right treatment and support, most people with depression can make a full recovery. 

Antidepressants are a type of medicine used to treat clinical depression. They can also be used to treat a number of other conditions, including: obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), generalised anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) It’s thought they work by increasing levels of chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. Certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and noradrenaline, are linked to mood and emotion.

A psychiatrist is primarily trained to prescribe medications and diagnose psychiatric disorders, although some psychiatrists can also offer psychological therapies as well.

A psychologist has specialist training in giving people talking treatments or psychological therapies. The things to bear in mind when choosing whether to see a psychiatrist or psychologist are whether you’re likely to need medication or not. If you will need medication, then it’s very important to be assessed and treated by a psychiatrist.

A psychiatric consultation is a meeting to look into the symptoms that you’re having to see how long you’ve been suffering from them and what might have led to them coming on. You would talk about all the different factors, which could have led to the psychiatric difficulties that you’re having now. Your psychiatrist would diagnose your condition and prescribe the most appropriate medication

Not really. Most of the medications do not have any addictive potential and can be very crucial for the person’s mental wellbeing.
However, it’s important to be mindful that there are certain medications which have a very highly addictive quality like sleeping pills and should only be prescribed following a thorough assessment and supervision by a psychiatrist.

We strongly discourage patients from consuming any medications for that matter without consulting your doctor.

Following the initial assessment, and where indicated, an option is available for patients to have access to follow-up appointments. These appointments would be focused upon treatment of the identified mental illness. Such appointments can be booked either for a half hour or full hour.