Medications for Social Anxiety and Social Anxiety Disorder
97to be metabolized or broken down. For example, a drug with a  half-life of 
twelve hours would be 50 percent broken down in twelve hours and 75 
percent broken down after another twelve hours. Drugs with a longer half-
life are broken down more slowly, giving the body time to adjust to stopping 
the drug).
STAGES IN MEDICATION TREATMENT
Treatment with medication involves the following ﬁve different stages:
1. The ﬁrst stage is the assessment . During this phase, your doctor will ask you the 
necessary questions to help choose the best medication for your needs.
2. The second stage is initiation of the drug . In most cases, medications are started 
at relatively low dosages to give your body a chance to adapt gradually to 
the new drug.
3. The third stage is dose escalation . During this stage of treatment, the dosage 
is gradually increased until the individual’s symptoms start to improve. The 
goal of dose escalation is to ﬁnd the lowest dosage that is effective for a 
particular person. Throughout the process, care is taken to minimize any 
side effects that may be present.
4. The fourth stage is called maintenance . During maintenance, the individual 
continues to take the medication for an extended period of time. For anti   
depressants, it is usually recommended that treatment continue for at 
least a year, minimizing the chances of symptoms returning following 
discontinuation.
5. The ﬁfth and ﬁnal stage of medication treatment is discontinuation . Some time 
after a person has improved on a medication, the individual may be encour -
aged to decrease the amount of the medication to assess whether he or she