Conventional Treatment For Stress

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It may not always be possible to alleviate all the causes and symptoms of stress without professional help. In addition to the family doctor, there is a great variety of various alternative therapies and medicines available, many of which provide excellent stress relief.

Tranquillizers

There are a variety of tranquillizing drugs that act to suppress the central nervous system, thereby reducing anxiety and other stress-related symptoms. Benzodiazepines, such as Valium, Librium or Ativan, are the most commonly prescribed minor tranquillizers. Because these products have few side effects and are relatively safe in overdose, they have come to replace barbiturates as prescribed sedatives and sleeping pills.

Benzodiazepines depress mental activity and alertness, but do not generally make you drowsy or clumsy as do barbiturates, but they do affect driving and similar skills. Alone, benzodiazepines cannot produce the 'high' that alcohol or barbiturates produce, and after up to two weeks' continuous use, they may become ineffective as sleeping pills, and after four months may become ineffective against anxiety.

Long-term dependence is more likely to be psychological; the pills become a means of coping with stressful events, and there may be severe anxiety if the drug is unavailable. Withdrawal symptoms appear in many users if they suddenly stop taking such drugs after about eight years' treatment with normal doses. Symptoms include insomnia, anxiety, tremor, irritability, nausea and vomiting. Such symptoms are more noticeable with shorter-acting benzodiazepines such as lorazepam and temazepam.

In the 1950s and 1960s doctors would prescribe minor tranquillizers almost indiscriminately and for indefinite periods. Nowadays the medical profession is more aware that the short-term benefits of these drugs can be outweighed by long-term problems of dependency and withdrawal. In Britain in 1988, the Committee on Safety of Medicines recommended that minor tranquillizers should be prescribed for a period of no longer than two to four weeks.