This is an overview of Fluoxetine, which has a brand name of Prozac and is an antidepressant medication in the SSRI drug class.
Hi my name is dan and i’m a mental health pharmacist and today i will be talking about fluoxetine that has a brand name of prozac and fluoxetine is an ssri antidepressant medication so it works by boosting serotonin which is a chemical messenger and is associated with happiness like all ssri medications it takes some time to insert the full effects so usually we
Recommend patients try it for at least four weeks before deciding if the medication works or doesn’t work for them there’s a few things that differentiates fluoxetine to the other ssri medications first of which is it has a really long half-life so what that means is that it takes your body quite some time to clear the compounds out of your body this is generally
Seen as a good thing because a dose can be missed and it usually won’t cause any ill effects and there’s not really withdrawal with fluoxetine so it can just be stopped and the dose will slowly go down over time rather than some of the short acting ssris if they’re stopped suddenly withdrawal effects can happen additionally fluoxetine is associated with a little
Bit of norepinephrine and dopamine increase especially in the front part of the brain which can cause a little bit of a energy boost and this can be a good or bad thing depending on which symptoms of depression you have so if you’re having trouble sleeping that might be a negative for you but if you’re having depression where you’re having a lot of trouble getting
Out of the bed in the morning and having fatigue that little boost of energy could be a good thing we walk satine is normally dosed between 10 and 80 milligrams daily and it’s important to note that the doses between different antidepressants even within different ssri antidepressants aren’t comparable on a milligram 2 milligram basis so for example if the walks
Of team 10 wouldn’t be the same as citalopram 10 or something like that the side effects are similar to the other ssris you can get the gi side-effects the headache side effects when you start taking it and then sexual dysfunction this medication is usually taken once daily i usually recommend when patients start to take it to take it in the morning due to that
Potential for a little bit of an energy boost so it can boost the energy throughout the day rather than taking it at night where it may cause some sleep issues but overall this is a pretty common ssri so even though it was the first ssri approved just because it’s older it doesn’t mean it’s not as good so it’s used all the time most providers would be familiar with
It and it would probably be a good choice if someone’s maybe a little forgetful with our medications and forgets every once in a while and with a patient who is maybe a little fatigued or has a little bit of trouble getting motivated you know throughout the day so this medication could help perk someone up a little bit so that wraps up my overview of fluoxetine
Which has a brand name of prozac and i hope that was helpful thank you
Transcribed from video
Fluoxetine (Prozac) Brief Overview By Dan Greer
