[PaulHoule]

It is more complex than that.

For one thing, "which doctor?"

Primary care physicians prescribe SSRIs all the time. You probably want to see a primary care physician anyway and get a thorough checkup and blood work to rule out physical causes. Your family doc or internist should also be able to refer you to a psychiatrist (who will usually offer more complex drug therapy) or to a talk therapist or both.

[gm-conspiracy]

Do you think GPs should be prescribing SSRIs after a 15-minute exam?

[PaulHoule]

That is better than nothing; really you should have a relationship with your PCP, I think I did have a 15 minute exam when I got an SSRI prescription, but I had seen that doc for three years and had talked about SSRIs for a while. I chose to take them because I know my life was about to get turned upside down and wanted to be proactive about dealing with it.

The main SSRI counterindication is that people with psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder are likely to get worse (manic) with SSRI treatment. A GP can screen for this and be right most of the time.

Unfortunately this is a disease like Diabetes that gets progressively worse, treatment with antipsychotic drugs might slow this. Psychotics tend to hate antipsychotic drugs and putting that together with it being almost impossible to force people take them many people don't get treated. They shouldn't get a script from a GP, they should see a psychiatrist.

The key to SSRI success is not the length of the first appointment, but the followup. You should have at least one and maybe several followup appointments to adjust dosage, medication, also consider a psych referral.