Side Effects of Bipolar Medication

By Ask the Expert Patient, Health Guide Wednesday, December 19, 2007

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Andimom writes: I was recently put on Tegretol. Now my hair is falling out at an alarming rate.CJK writes: I am concerned since my son has become very quiet since on these Depakote and Abilify. He finds social conversation to be very difficult. Is this a side effect??? Do you see a common theme eme...

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DaisyMom

12/19/07 9:43am

Dear Expert Patient,

What about when the patient tweaks the meds herself? For example, my daughter's doctor prescribes meds and if they make her too tired, or don't produce results, she decreases or increases the dose respectively. She used to work for a doctor, she's very smart, reads all the med literature, and thinks she knows it all. This is a form of noncompliance that is very difficult to deal with, especially when the patient is an adult and I as her mother, for example, have no access to the doctor.

How common is this do you think?

Thanks,

DaisyMom

Ask the Expert Patient, Health Guide

12/19/07 11:36am

Hi, DaisyMom. Self-tweaking with the pdoc in the loop is common for sleeping and anxiety meds. These are often prescribed on an as-needed basis, at the patient's discretion. Less common are strategies for patients self-tweaking mood stabilizers and other meds. There would probably be a lot more compliance if these strategies were implemented. But for these strategies to work, patients need to be extremely mindful. (I have a series of articles on mindfulness coming up in my recovery series.) Simply free-lancing with meds is totally irresponsible.

DaisyMom

12/19/07 1:57pm

Thanks for your response, it's helpful to get information from a 3rd party. In my daughter's case, the doctor is often not in the loop and most recently she was tweaking the Geodon, prescribed at 160 mg. dosage. She felt it was too much so uncapped the capsule and took less. She said about 120 mg.

John McManamy, Health Guide

12/19/07 3:08pm

Hi, DaisyMom. I don't know the fine points of Geodon, but if your daughter had this conversation with her psychiatrist and together they reaching a meeting of minds on these kind of issues, then that would be good practice. Everyone would win.

The catch is your daughter needs to articulate these needs to her pdoc. If she doesn't trust her pdoc, she either needs to work on her trust issues or shop for a new pdoc.

In other words, all she may have to do is tweak herself a bit to turn into a compliant patient, but one in charge, with her own discretion to tweak up or down.

Anonymous

1/12/08 4:01am

My son became very quite and his social conversation was very difficult, one week before I lost him..I live in Florida and he was in Ky that last 4 months of his life, and was on medication I could barely get a conversation from out and I would joke, and he normally would respond with a joke, and we use to laugh a lot, but at the end he would not...His best buddy from Fla called him 2 days before we lost him, and he said my son would barely talk to him... he said he asked him, if he was mad at him, or if he had done something to him and my son said "no" but that was the only conversation he would have.. when I called him and told him about my son, then he said he knew something was wrong with Kevin from their conversation, but didnt know what... I am only 17 years older than my son, and we use to be close, and could talk about anything, and he did share a lot with me when he was at his peak of bipolar, that he would not have done before, and we had a lot of good times, but again I wish I could have done something to save him..I always thought of myself as being so "understanding and together" but evidently not as smart as I thought I was...or together!!!! he was in Ky when he got on meds because I asked him to...and he tried.... but all this was messing with his mind........ He bought me a Toyola Prius Hybrid for mothers day, himself a BMW convertible, and his step mom a Audi Roadster Conv during his spending spree... I still have the Prius, they came for his BMW and before then the Audi was taken back..now Im trying to keep the Prius... dont know if I can because in his name.... Just educate yourself on Bipolar and do everything you can to prevent what happened to my son....

Side Effects of Bipolar Medication

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