How long did it take for you to see any real ‘benefit’ from anti depressants?

[Cookson]

How long did it take for you to see any therapeutic improvement from anti depressants? 
 
Am interested in people’s experience of how long it took for them to respond to treatment. I myself took them for 7 weeks and didn’t exactly feel better.
 
But then guidelines suggest 8 to 10 weeks to become effective.

[mtnbkr]

Everyone is different. I had significant improvement of depression within a week. But lots if people in this forum never had anything but trouble from the meds.

[Meimeiquest]

The first time, I felt some better within a week, much better in 3 months. Huge mistake as all my real issues were left untouched.

[Barbarannamated]

Everyone is different. I had significant improvement of depression within a week. But lots if people in this forum never had anything but trouble from the meds.

This describes me. I never had any improvement, but had chronic head/neck pain begin shortly after starting which, years later, was attributed (at least in part) to bruxism caused by SSRIs. Lost everything - my health, ability to work and support myself...life as i knew it.

[starlitegirlx]

Never felt better from them. I was on the russian roulette program for at least a year or more with my doc where we kept trying new drugs and if the side effects were bad we'd try again. That should have been my clue to just not use them. I finally settle on imipramine, tegretol with the benzo klonopin being the only consistent one that we didn't change. Even then, I honest think the only real reason I improved was due to time as a factor and me coping with the actual stress and situation stuff better because I came to accept it than it was the drug. Over the years I've felt full out apathy and very depressed at times. Even suicidal at times. If the med was working, I wouldn't have felt that way. I suspect the med triggered these things more than help them.