I’m wondering because my abilify maintena ain’t doing much been on many different meds and very few work or they stop working
Im wondering the same. My abilify stopped working fully too.
It is different for everyone. You have to keep trying till you find one that works for you. 
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What are the symptoms you are struggling with right now ?
Mostly paranoia and voices
I have sza and take amisulpride for psychosis, and olanzapine and lamotrigine for depression.
I started out with amisulpride which helped a lot with positive symptoms and later pdoc had to add olanzapine for depression and then lamotrigine, as amisulpride wasn’t enough on its own.
I think with sza a med combo works best as each adds it’s effects. Because with sza there’s positive symptoms and negative symptoms and depression/mania. So a lot to treat.
The best AP for resistant voices and paranoia is clozapine. But not everyone tolerate it.
If you say schizoaffective, it means you also struggle with depression or mania, or both. For that, they usually give an antidepressant (if you’re mostly depressive) or a mood stabilizer such as depakote or lithium, of you’re cycling.
The “gold standard” AP is clozapine. It is the go to med doctors use when a pt shows a lot of med resistance and nothing seems to be working for them. It works for like 90 something percent of cases. But it has some serious side effects.
In general the “pips” and “rips” ie aripiprazole (what you are on) are the weakest of the antipsychotics but also are generally found to have the least side effects. The “dones” ie risperidone are the next step up in effectiveness and have some more side effects. The “pines” ie quetiapine are the strongest of the APs with the most side effects.
So don’t lose hope if abilify isn’t strong enough for you, you still have a number of options left to you.
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Not to contradict you but wikipedia says risperdone and olanzapine are stronger than quetiapine which is equal to Abilify.
@AwesomeFisherman I would try Risperdal before Clozapine.
Clozapine is the strongest but it can weaken your immune system so you get more infections more easily and you need weekly blood tests at the beginning then once a month.
Yes the “dones” like Risperidone are stronger than the “pines” ie Seroquel.
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Geodon and Seroquel have been great for me. These drugs do weaken my body badly. They don’t dull my brain so much, though. As a matter of fact, I like what Geodon and Seroquel do to my mind. They control my symptoms with no mental side effects. My body keeps getting uglier, but a lot of that is do to age.
I w as on in Vega then changed diagnosis personality disorder taken off still trying to wean off 5 months later and still no p e I Ord from high prolactin
Seroquel and Zyprexa were both too “weak” for me.
Abilify was the weakest for me. Zyprexa I was only 2-3 weeks on it so I can’t really know if it made me stable but from what remember its not as effective as Risperdal and Latuda. Risperdal is the strongest and best ap I have tried.
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Its just what I learned in our neuropsychopharmacology class. Its more of a general rule I’m sure there are some exceptions.
Wikipedia sources are cited you just click at the citation number.
btw I took 1 neuroscience class and 4 psychology classes (electives) at university, core courses were anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, research methods class etc
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Zyprexa is one of the strongest of AP’s. Second only to Clozaril. Risperdal is right up there with Zyprexa.
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I took all those courses too.
