(Wasn’t sure whether to tag the flair as ‘Chemistry’ or ‘Biology’, as the question is related to both)
In: Chemistry
I don’t know about antipsychotics, but that’s not what antidepressants do. They give you more energy before they necessarily improve your mood. This has to do with the subtleties in how serotonin works.
Basically, if you still feel worthless and empty, but you have energy to do things, you can hurt yourself. You also have a bunch of side effects for the first two weeks (like exhaustion, indigestion, etc.), that can make you feel worse.
So they warn you that it can cause suicidal thoughts and actions because it makes you feel energized without feeling better for a little while.
Drugs alone can’t improve someone’s mental health. Often, people on anti-depressants commit suicide when they get the drug, because for the first time in years, they feel strong enough to carry out a plan. To make a bad analogy, the brain is a computer; the drugs can fix the broken hardware but the user still has to rewrite the software.
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