Hi there. My diagnoses has been bouncing around from schizophrenia to bipolar. I think my current doc has decided on bipolar and is going to put me on a mood stabilizer. She gave me three choices to look into, depakote, lamictle, and topamax. I’ve looked them up briefly and am leaning toward topamax since it can cause some weight loss, which would be great because of all the weight gain I’ve had on abilify.
Does anyone have any experience with topamax? Has it helped with your mania and/or depression? Any side effects?
Topamax was fun, but it gave me the shakes like crazy. I was very energetic on it, though. At the time I was underweight already, so I didn’t really notice any weight loss.
Depakote was awful for me. I started seeing monsters, and I thought I was in India at one point. It also made me suicidal. But I’ve seen Depakote work amazingly for other people. It really all depends on the person.
Thanks for the info ninjastar. I could definitely use some energy,not the shakes of course. I guess I won’t really know till I try. But I think I’ve ruled out depakote since I think it is the most like lithium, which I didn’t do well on. I’m working part time right now and I just don’t want to mess that up with side effects of a new med. I read that topamax can jumble your words or make you forget what your trying to say and has been dubbed dope-a-max by some
Yea topamax is not a valid mood stabilizer for bipolar though. It’s a weight loss and migraine drug. If you want a mood stabilizer I would suggest lamictal
I’ve been on Lamictal for years. For me, it’s a great mania blocker, but doesn’t seem to do much for depression. I’ve never heard of Topamax being used as a mood stabilizer.
