By MADDIE KIRKMAN
Staff Writer
Antidepressants are a medication to alleviate depression. Many people all over the world take this medication. It can have a different effect on everyone. Multiple teenagers tend to get on this medication during their high school years. A lot of teenagers fall into depression as they get older. As teenagers get on this medication it can either help them significantly, or it can make them even worse. As a person who takes this medication, I can assure you that it really changes you as a person. I was falling into a really deep depression as I got older. There were family issues, relationship issues and many more. My mother put me on Prozac, which is a type of antidepressant. This medication worked great for a few weeks. After a while on the medicine, it made me careless. I began to become unafraid of everything. I didn’t care about the consequences that could occur in my choices and I acted insane. I felt numb and had no emotion at all. I began disobeying my parents and doing whatever I wanted. I started doing risky things as well. This was a part of my life that is greyed out because it was only the medication doing it to me. After a while of experiencing that, my doctor prescribed me to go on Wellbutrin as well as Prozac. I am currently on both prescriptions. After starting the Wellbutrin, my emotions slowly came back and my anxiety went away. I am way happier and I feel like I’m worth something for once. Once I realized it was the medication doing that to me, I started to interview other teenagers around El Diamante campus who have taken antidepressants to see how it can affect different people. One student I interviewed was on antidepressants for years and it made her suicidal. She was a totally different person when she was on the medication. It changed her for the worse. She attempted multiple times because of the pills. Another student I interviewed had no problems with them. They worked amazingly for him. This goes to show that antidepressants can be both bad and good for teens. Everybody is different and they need different things for different situations. Antidepressants may be good for you, but there is also a chance they can affect you negatively. Be extremely careful getting on antidepressants because you never know what could happen.