Has anyone successfully used Risperdal/Risperidone for depression?
My pdoc won’t let me have an anti-depressant and I don’t know why. When I first explained that most of my issues are with depression and anxiety (and sometimes resulting anger), I was brushed off and it was like my therapist and pdoc only cared about psychosis.
So I tried to be patient and reasoned with myself that maybe they felt the psychosis needed to come first, and then they would deal with the depression. So I waited some weeks and then asked about Effexor, an AD that helped my depression in the past. But my pdoc said no, and said I couldn’t have that type of medication.
So then I figured okay maybe it’s a power struggle thing and she needs to decide herself that I need an AD, like it has to be her own idea. So I waited and then last appointment I mentioned that while I haven’t had any apparent issues with psychosis lately, that I am still getting crying spells at night with terrible intrusive thoughts, like my mother dying and other things.
She didn’t respond at all to what I was saying. She remarked that I wasn’t wearing my hat and that I seemed less anxious physically to her, so therefore everything was fine and she wanted to just keep me at 2mg of Risperidone and do nothing.
Now lately my mood seems to be cycling in extremes. I go from almost slap happy at times to extremely depressed, especially at night, which so happens to be right after I take the Risperidone as I take it in the mid-evening, like around 7PM.
Now I have started to worry that the Risperidone is making my depression worse somehow. I have gone from lots of anxiety and anger to lots of sadness and crying “attacks” so to speak.
Does it sound like my pdoc is ignoring a problem, or is there a possible method to the madness that I’m not seeing? I feel ignored and am starting to get worried about my medication.
Nothing really. My medicine, and yours too, already has a mood stabilizer component and anti-depressant properties. I was very depressed a year ago, and it went away on it’s own, it was probably post-psychotic depression. I have down days but it doesn’t last more than a few days, so I’m not worried.
You’ve been in a good mood lately, I don’t understand where this is coming from Turnip…
Well I don’t post all my thoughts and feelings here because sometimes it’s nothing but negative energy and there’s not much point spraying it all over everybody, especially people who are already vulnerable like peers on mental health sites. Like it’s one of my personal policies not to carry on about suicidal feelings to others online and such. But I’ve been having these spells almost every day and usually at night. I can’t figure out where it is coming from. I just tried telling my pdoc about it and she acted like I hadn’t told her at all. So I tried upping my dosage to 3mg and it hasn’t worked for these spells, so now I’m getting flustered up because I don’t think my pdoc is taking me seriously. I am just very flustered worrying about it today. Like it’s very hard for me to cry in front of other people because I wasn’t allowed to cry growing up, it was a physically punishable offense. So even if I’m sitting there feeling suicidal I still seem “fine” and then I don’t want to “act out” to prove a point because that would be giving into Borderline tendencies. I just feel stuck in a corner.
Maybe call a crisis line, talk to someone who understands the matter? And trained for it.
Insist with your pdoc that you’re having suicide ideation, tell her it’s serious and that you want it adressed. If not, go to another psychiatrist immediatly.
Only certain classes of antidepressants. If you were to use an SSRI which only effects seratonin levels it should not affect psychosis. It’s a conversation I had with my first pdoc.
do you have bipolar disorder? ssris can trigger mania so that might be why your pdoc isnt prescribing you an ssri. but if youre not bipolar, then i have no idea why
Apart from when first put on medication(anafranil) I have never been put on a stand alone AD
I know when I went off meds for a year under pdoc say so and had to go back on pdoc wouldn’t prescribe stand alone AD because of possible effect on my mood. He prescribed Zyprexa instead.
She has implied that she thinks it’s depressive type but hasn’t said so outright. If it were my guess I would say it’s bipolar type, even if I don’t get euphoric mania. I still get the impulsive and mixed state stuff, or atypical depression. So many labels to say the same things. But basically like depression with anxiety and insomnia at the same time.
