Hello,
I am brand new here. DIagnosed with schizophrenia about two months ago. Been on risperidone for about a month, maybe less. It does NOT seem to help me sleep, although I am much more calm now overall. I often wake up at three in the morning and just stay up the rest of the day. However, the question I have is this: does anyone else have this feeling like they want to crawl outta their skin? The doc said risperidone may give me restless leg syndrome. I don’t think that is what I am experiencing. It is more of an overall, can’t-sit-still-constantly-feel-the-need-to-stretch feeling, and while stretching my muscles and doing yoga poses feels good, it doesn’t remedy the feeling for long. Any suggestions?
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Hey and welcome 
, give it some time it might go away, some side effects go away after a few months on it. If it doesn’t go away you should discuss with your pdoc an add on med.
Was different for me, made me sleep so much and did not want to do anything, I switched to Ambilify
I’d discuss this with your pdoc. I get inner restlessness too and discovered it was caused by one of the antipsychotics I was taking. I had to switch to another one.
Hi and welcome
Tell your doctor you’re suffering from
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Akathisia…YES that is what it must be. Thanks so much for all the help and welcomes! Glad to be here…lol.
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Yeah that sounds like me in the first few months of starting my INVEGA. It got better but didn’t completely go away. I ended up going on lexapro which is an antidepressant and that took care of it within a week.
It’s very often side effect of risperidone. Got 2 betablockers added for this and it didn’t help. Was waiting couple of months for this to go away which was hell and it didn’t. Wish you luck i remember how hard it was for me.
Hi, yeah, I have that too,
but I kind of like it. Keeps me from vegging too long.
RLS also has that. A friend of mine has that and she says she can feel severe discomfort in her muscles and that it can start to hurt if she doesn’t move. That can be helped by Clonazepam.
I didn’t develop the rest less feeling until the third time I was prescribed it. I was on a really low dose but it was high enough the doctor felt it was effective and told me he would never raise the dose. I became delusional and manic. I thought an episode of south park actually happened. I’m not saying this is going to happen to you, just be careful and if the problem persist be sure to inform your doctor.
I got akathisia the third time I was on Haldol.
I have that too while on Haldol but its not as bad as it was while on risperidone.
I also got a movement disorder in my jaw that didn’t go away for months after I stopped taking it. I think I might have dodged a bullet by the name of TD.
Actualy two APs which don’t cause this (and don’t give you extrapyramidal symptoms) are clozapine and quetiapine. They got some “nice” different side effects aswell -clozapine could cause leukemia.
I have legs and hands tremors from the Haldol. they prescribed me congintin but lowered the dose of it a few months ago so it’s back.
I get akathisia when I take quetiapine
Haldol made me restless. It also gave me severe panic attacks and movement disorder. I was told I was moving more slowly like noticeably odd. I don’t like that med
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Yes I’ve quick searched google and I see that it can cause that. For me it was on of two AP I was on which didn’t give that. I was sleeping for 18 hours.
I also think that acutally I had it little mixed up, since actuallly quetiapine and clozapine don’t cause extrapyramidal symptoms.
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you need cogentin also known as benztropine. I had the same issue and had issues sleeping till one day i figured it out that cogentin is what i needed. ever since gettting put on it about 2 months ago ive been able to sleep throughout the night. I never put it together that akathisia could cause problems with sleep, but it does. I was put on cogentin two months ago and i have been sleeping well. It’s called Cogentin and the other name for it is Benztropine. It works. I don’t think that a doctor should prescribe certain antipsychotics without keeping cogentin in mind.I also was getting stress hives. It got pretty bad.