Hello,
Welcome to Health Care Magic.
I understand your concern.
Look
depression is an illness with significant personal suffering and
socio-occupational dysfunction. Sometimes it is needed to continue therapy for a longer period of time to maintain a sustained remission and to prevent relapse of illness.
Citalopram is a novel antidepressant and often recommended as a first choice drug for depressive disorders. It is usually preferred because it has better safety profile and less adverse effect on body
metabolism than most of the other antidepressants, hence it can be used concomitantly with various other medications safely.
The usual dose used is 20 to 40 mg per day. After few months of therapy it has been noticed in few patients that there comes a phase when resistance to the antidepressant effect of the medicine is noticed. Then either increase in dose or augmentation with another psychotropic drug or switch to another antidepressant is required.
In your case there are few issues as below:-
1. The dose of Citalopram is suboptimal (10mg daily in your case) and it should be at least 20 mg per day to have a desired antidepressant effect.
2. Apparently a resistance to antidepressant effect to Citalopram has been encountered.
You can either discuss these issues with your therapist and he may either increase the dose of Citalopram or add some medicine to augment the antidepressant effect or may switch to a new antidepressant.
Your therapist may also start “Psychotherapy” as research has shown that psychotherapy is as effective as antidepressant medication in treating depression of mild/moderate intensity.