Risperdal and negative symptoms

This from 2012 was posted to me by pm on another forum.

It makes for interesting reading. Here’s what I wrote in reply "

Thanks for that. I am indeed on risperdal consta. I am almost certain the Consta didn’t cause the lack of motivation etc but has done nothing to improve it/possibly exacerbated it.
It’s hard to know whether it would be called negative symptoms or depressive symptoms.
I think in terms of motivation cognition comes into play as well. I tend to back away from things that require organising and planning or are multi step tasks.
Just the thought of some things can make me feel overwhelmed which of course ramps up my anxiety and in turn makes it harder to think straight.
A lot is tied in with those unrecognised and untreated learning difficulties I have mentioned, and the fact my executive functioning skills leave a lot to be desired.

I did mention about the motivational etc issues soon after starting risperdal and said it had been going on quite a while.

Here’s the post I wrote about it on usenet.

firemonkey
06/11/2009
Had my injection on Wednesday.My care co ordinator who usually gives me
my injection thinks i might need to see my consultant again. I explained
to her that although the injection helps me to be less paranoid and
prone to weird thoughts it
doesn’t do much for my lack of motivation- that sometimes i don’t get
dressed for several days at a time and don’t like going out of my flat much.

She thinks i might be depressed.I told her i don’t feel as though i’m
depressed,that i either feel too little ie blah/grey or feel too much
ie negative emotions.
When i explained further(that the lack of motivation/not wanting to get
dressed etc had been going on for quite a while) she said the lack of
motivation sounds like a chronic rather than acute problem and could be
a negative symptom of my illness.

I wondered what she meant by negative symptom of my illness as currently
as far as i know i’m dxed personality disorder NOS and i associate
positive and negative symptoms with schizophrenia and schizoaffective(my
previous dx- mixed type) .

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I have a memory like a sieve at times. I just found out I posted a pubmed version of that link about 7 months ago .

These things happen with me. The backing away, feeling overwhelmed by multi-step tasks, anxiety followed by anxiety. I take a small amount of risperdal and have suspected it in the past. I don’t take the consta. Never heard anyone else say these things.

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I can’t totally blame the Consta for that as it’s a long running problem. Like you I’ve not heard many here talk of difficulty with executive functioning/multi step tasks.