Most of our patients take the SSRIs daily, but we do have a handful that take meds like Xanax for a specific amount of time related to their periods say the first 10 days of their cycle or days 22-28, depending on when they feel the most ‘haried’. I know that some of our patients have taken them for 2 weeks, but then tried them for longer because they felt SO MUCH BETTER. My doc looks at everything on a case by case basis, but if the patient is noticing a marked improvement then she will encourage them to take it daily versus during specific times of their cycle. In most cases, the women have been dealing with their issues for so long, they are uncertain whether there are times when their moods ‘increase’ they just know that they feel awful and are acting accordingly.
The bonus also being that although SSRIs still have a bit of a stigma to them, they don’t carry the potential health risks that adding more hormones potentially do for women (breast cancer, heart issues, etc), and depending on the severity of the symptoms, they don’t require incredibly high doses in order to improve the conditon. HRT can be a lot of adjusting whereas the relief from the SSRI is pretty immediate.
It will be interesting to see how you do during your ‘Special Lady Time”….that’s a medical term we throw around here 