meds do they really help

I'm curious Gaz, how long a period of time you're giving your meds when you try them.  Psychiatric meds take weeks, and often months to achieve the full effect.  If you give up too soon you'll never know.

I recently went back on Abilify, the side effects for the first week were a big pain in the butt but once I got past that I started to notice a difference.  Not a great difference, but baby steps.  I've been on the med about two and a half weeks now and my pdoc plans to raise my dosage every month until we hit an optimum level.  So it will take months before I see how this drug is really going to affect me.

Just make sure you aren't giving up too soon. 

Take Care Gaz

Ellie

joan,  I first want to say that I am really sorry about your boyfriend.  It sounds like a terrible situation for him and you obviously have a lot of love and concern for him.  It is hard to say or pick apart what may of went wrong as we dont know the situation but I wonder if he has some sort of medical problem for him being in a nursing home as a mental illness even schizophrenia would not put him there.  There can be a whole host of explanations for the reason that he is going down hill one being maybe drug interaction and also being prescribed Haldol without given Cogentin to go with it as I first posted to you.  This is most definitely a question for you to pose to his doctor or the nursing staff for where he resides.  I do want to say that Bipolar Disorder is NOT the same as Schizophrenia.  They are two totally different disorders and should not be confused. 

So, the question is do these medications really work?  In my opinion it is on an individual basis.  They work for some people and others they dont.  Sometimes you have to find the exact right drug that is going to work for you.  Trust me, I have seen this by the hundreds and people with these disorders have a better chance of having a productive life on the medications than not.  But in the end it is always your choice.

Joan

Firstly Bipolar Disorder is NOT the same as Schizophrenia.
Secondly, your boy friend needs a second set of opinions on his condition and its causes. It sounds to me that not just tardive d, but other factors may be making maters worse and he may benefit if these additional factors are dealt with. He should be viewed by specialists in Neurology and in internal medicine not just Psychs. The only time I've seen such a bad case was in an individual with an additional brain disease which interacted with the drugs to make matters worse. I wish you my best.

gaz

With respect to meds in Bipolar they do work for most people when they find the magic combination for them. Often the problem in BP II is that they start on the wrong meds [antidepressants] which cause rapid-cycling which in turn makes the condtion harder to treat. Furthermore effective treatments may initially fail during this rapid cycling and hence are dismissed while they would have worked during a non-rapid cycling phase. Lithium for instance can take over a year to start having an effect. But can seem in some of little benefit over the short term during rapid cycling.

Drugs such as Lamicatal seem to produce better results in BP II. I've seen many have transformed lives on meds. As always know the pro's and con's of all medical decisions - here the benefits & side-effects of the meds.

Post Edited (SMSIRL) : 3/11/2006 10:04:53 PM (GMT-7)

Hey Gaz,

Yes -- the medications do really work.  Most successes depend on a slew of factors - not least of which being the fact of the family & variable support mechanisms that the patient has.    Many medications can only boast efficacy in about 60% about the patient population (depending on the size of the individual study & drug comparitors).  However, as is mentioned above -- it does take time.  Often patients who experience immediate positive resolutions in symptomology go on to then relapse faster than those who experience prolonged alleviation of their symptoms.

To "Gaz"s point -- I'm unsure why a psychiatrist, in todays medical society, would allow a patient to experience TD.  There are much safer drugs on the market that do no induce Extrapyramidal Syndrome (which can often lead to TD).  Additionally -- Sertraline (as published recently by Goldberg & his colleagues) is associated with a high relapse to subsyndromal hypomania, hypomania or mania even in the presence of a mood stabilizer (such as Lithium).  Lamotragine is the only medication currently indicated for the prevention of bipolar depression -- however, Quetiapine has filed an sNDA for the indication and should receive the indication probably pretty soon (given the results of the BOLDER I & II trials).

Hope this helps!

ckg