Medications are often a crucial component of the overall treatment plans for mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. There are many different types and classes of medications, all of which are designed to reduce symptoms, improve functioning and enhance overall well-being.
Your mental health professional will begin with a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation and medical history before determining which medications are best suited for you. As treatment proceeds, your provider will monitor your progress and adjust the dosage(s) as necessary to maximize benefit and minimize any negative side effects of your medication regimen.
Often in combination with medication management, psychotherapy and solutions-based counseling sessions can support patients with behavioral health disorders.
In addition to providing a comprehensive range of outpatient mental health services, the University Hospitals Behavioral Health Institute offers hospital-based services such as urgent assessments, consultation services and inpatient psychiatric hospitalization.
Available for both inpatients and outpatients, ECT is one of the safest and most effective treatments for certain psychiatric illnesses. Performed while the patient is under general anesthesia, the therapy involves delivering brief electrical stimuli through electrodes applied to the scalp.
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic medication that can cause a person to feel separated or detached from their body or physical environment. Medically supervised ketamine infusion therapy may be a treatment option for patients with depression when antidepressants and other treatments have been unsuccessful.
Esketamine is a more potent version of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic medication used to treat major depressive disorders and other mental health conditions.
Used in conjunction with oral antidepressant medications, esketamine is delivered as a nasal spray and administered as three doses, five minutes apart, under a doctor’s supervision. Treatment is offered on an outpatient basis but patients will receive dosing in the clinic and remain there under medical supervision until the potential for side effects has passed.
rTMS is a brain stimulation technique in which rapidly changing magnetic pulses are introduced near the scalp. The pulses create an electric field which stimulates areas of the brain associated with various disorders such as depression.
