Does buspirone Work for Anxiety and Depression?

I just started on Buspirone myself. I am 1 week and 2 days in. He is having me take ½ pill in AM and ½ in PM to start (10mg tabs). Then to increase by ½ dose weekly until I am at 30mg daily. I am already feeling better and am so thankful. I actually didn't know how bad I was feeling until now. I hope you get to feeling better, Sarah! I'm am glad I happened across this page. Unless you have anxiety, you don't understand what it is like. I'm glad I'm not alone! God Bless!

Hi Sarah: I have had exactly the same exact experience as Rathmullan. This medication, buspirone, has worked wonderfully well for me to keep my anxiety under control, which is effective in keeping my concurrent depressions at bay. It works better for me at lower doses, as Rathmullan mentioned in his experience.
I no longer have anxiety attacks or panic attacks since starting back on Buspirone. Even though it has been around for years, I had never been prescribed Buspirone until about 3 years ago, after suffering from frequent bouts of anxiety, often accompanied by depression. It doesn't work for everyone, but the fact that you have experienced some relief already, should be a good indicator that this medication is going to bring you ongoing relief too!
Buspirone is often prescribed as an add-on to an antidepressant, but works all by itself in my experience, to treat my anxiety successfully. Stay positive, and good luck!

StogSarah

Great news! Myself I have been diagnosed with GAD and concurrent depression. For me the anxiety comes first and then leads to depression. So a medication that works on anxiety can also act as an anti-depressant for people like myself.

Meanwhile, yes - buspirone can have an immediate anxiolytic effect. The nice thing is, it also has a longer term effect after a couple of weeks and then , for me, it has had an anti-depressant effect at about the 2 month point. I don't know if people understand that very well. Your Doctor did well to explain that to you. I think people end up taking a higher dose of buspirone than is necessary because they don't wait long enough for those secondary effects. Stay at 20 mg per day. You will notice that things get better and better over the ensuing months.

All the best.

Hi, Sarah!
" Buspirone in general takes at least one to two weeks to have an initial effect and generally can take up to four to six weeks to actually have its full clinical effect. "
Buspirone is designed to alleviate anxiety and depression if it's associated with an anxiety disorder. It is not an antidepressant.
Personally, I've been on buspirone again for about 3 months now at the maximum dose of 60mg/day and it's fantastic. It is very effective at controlling my symptoms and I would say that I definitely started feeling better after about two weeks.
Hang in there and give it a little time to do it's job... hopefully you'll be feeling better very soon too.

Hi! Buspirone has really worked for me! I’ve been on it almost 3 months and I felt it started working almost instantly. With it really helping at around 8 weeks in. My doc started me at 10mg 3x a day. She just bumped it to 15 mg 3x a day and I feel even better. I was prescribed this for anxiety and panic but have had a bit of depression from the anxiety. I feel this has really helped. I did have a problem sleeping at first and was prescribed 1 mg clonazepam at night. But I’m currently weaning off that slowly. I feel like that was contributing to me being depressed and already feel better cutting back the dosage. To answer your question about your lack of appetite, I had that as well! Actually I dry heaved every morning. Each day got better though with a few rough days in between and eventually I started feeling a lot better 6-8 weeks in. I really hope you start feeling better too! Anxiety is awful! I will be praying for you!