Are doctors generally willing to prescribe "subclinical" doses of psych medications?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety for years, but have never been able to tolerate any of the popular, overprescribed medicines like Prozac, Paxil, Effexor, etc. I always have really miserable side effects that make it better to not be on them at all.

I recently heard an anecdote about a doctor prescribing a cancer patient a “subclinical” dose of an antidepressant - (all numbers fudged here) - let’s say that if the average prescription for paxil was 40mg a day, he wrote out a scrip for 5mg a day, just enough to do a little work “behind the scenes” in dealing with the inevitable depression and anxiety problems that would arise in dealing with the cancer and treatments.

Are doctors generally willing to do this for these types of meds? I’d be very interested in trying a very low dose that might be devoid of the side effects that have made the regular doses miserable for me over the years.

2

Well, I’ve been prescribed Lexapro, 10 mg a day, and I could easily split them in half and take 5 instead. They have a little line down the middle and everything. The problem with that is when I tried it thanks to the only noticeable side effects I’m getting (bye-bye orgasm and reduced sex drive) I got anxious and depressed again, so I went back to 10. I guess I can deal with the sex stuff for awhile, especially since it seems to be improving a bit.

You might want to find a doctor who knows more about these drugs than your usual GP, seeing as you’ve had problems with them in the past. At least, I would. My doc is great but if I was having problems I’d find somebody who specialized in this stuff.