HeadMeds gives young people in the United Kingdom general information about medication. HeadMeds does not give you medical advice. Please talk to your Doctor or anyone else who is supporting you about your own situation because everyone is different. Please read more important details about our site.

Practical Advice about Medicines

How to decide if a medicine is right for you

Each time you have a new medicine, we do not know how well it is going to work for you. We also do not know whether you will have side effects.

Licensing of medicines

By law, before a medicine can be prescribed by a doctor it must be given a product licence (or ‘marketing authorisation’) by a regulator. In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is the regulator.

Emergency room - taking too much medicine, or stopping medicines

For most medicines that are used for mental health problems, you could get very serious symptoms if you take more than it said on your medicine label.

Throwing your medicines away

When you stop taking a medicine, or it goes out-of-date, you can take them back to the nearest pharmacy and ask them to throw your medicines away for you.

Addiction and withdrawal

This page should help you to understand the difference between being addicted to a drug, and taking a medication that isn’t addictive, but shouldn’t be stopped suddenly.

Back to top ↑