Are You Kidding Me?

Dano MacNamarrah Says:

After a three month stay in Belvue, I was still severely depressed. I was released three days after I sliced open my wrists with a scalpel another patient had given me.

My regular p-doc immediately took me off the 600mgs per day of Thorazine. He stated that it was barbaric. It took me almost a year to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Hope you have fun at the movies. We’re making popcorn and toast, watching rentals and sketching.

Kenneth Wolman Says:

I don’t know what Seroquel is actually FOR. My psychiatrist in New York phoned in a scrip because I’d had several sleepless nights. She said “Take only half.” Well,how do you do that when there are no striation on the tablets? So I figured I’d just get real tired, and I swallowed the whole thing.

An hour later I was not sleeping but through I was having a stroke. I was driven to the local e-room, where they tested me for everything on earth, from stroke on down. See, I could barely walk without lurching and I could not quite speak. CAT scans came back okay. The docs figured was having a toxic reaction to the drug. No kidding. I went home and slept it off. Then I went back to another two weeks of insomnia. But I did not go back to that psychiatrist. Not at $200 a pop.

Broad Says:

You know, I might have to disagree with you here, Liz. My mother has dealt with clinical depression/severe anxiety for at least 40 years, and earlier this year her doctor put her on a super-low dose of Seroquel to very good results.

Do I think AZ should ram it through? OF course not. But I think it might have merit in some depression cases.

mercmood Says:

I have to partially agree with Kenneth and disagree with you, Liz, on some points.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and have been on meds for over 2 years with Zyprexa being the one that works the best. The only side efect that I had trouble with was sleeping for over 12 hours and still struggling to wake up, so I was switched to Abilify (which made me extremely restless), Effexor (which gave me terrible nightmares), and Invega (which made me extremely suicidal within a 2 hour period of taking it), only to find that Zyprexa works the best. For now. I have given Seroquel a try and have no idea why I was given this for depression, when the only thing it seems to treat is insomnia.

I will most likely go back to Zyprexa and be thankful that sleeping is the only issue I have to deal with.

Ashley Says:

I definitely understand where you are coming from, being that I am currently on a high dose of Seroquel for Bipolar Disorder and have been for the past 3 1/2 years. The effects of anti-psychotics are hardly what you would normally think of as things that would be helpful to a stereo-typical depressed person, but I think we have to remember that depression is different for everyone. I think Seroquel could have it’s place helping people with major depressive disorder, especially those who lean more towards anxious depressive states. While I take Seroquel mostly as an anti-manic, I think that it has helped me with aspects of my depression as well, the horrible cyclical suicidal thoughts that I had, the insomnia.

Of course I think AZ should be doing EXTENSIVE research and definitely not handing it out in NEARLY the same doses as it is used for in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia but as Kenneth said, it may be helpful in small doses.

I also know that that’s a fairy tale idea and not how it would happen at all, and it would be marketed asap and pushed on everyone and their mother.

Is it worth it? For me it was.

PrincessMoon Says:

When I was 14 I was put on Risperdal for anxiety. When I was 15, I was put on Abilify for anxiety. Tehn, alter in high school I was put on Seroquel for anxiety. I am now off all of these drugs after being put on cocktails of drugs during my middle school and high school years. I now have intense anxiety and have become anorexic. I was put on antipsychotics during my teenage eyars and they were awful. It’s totally unfair that I was given all these drugs as a teenager and I was never told about the horrible side effects, I had to discover them with firsthand experience. Risperdal had the worst side effects. I was on Risperdal in eigth grade. I remember as a teenager I went on Abilify and became very restless and got Akathisia, a movemenjt disorder and I had no diea what was going on. It’s very unfair what was done to me and that I was put on these dangerous antipsychotics during my teenage eyars. Now I’m off all drugs. It’s been seven years since I’ve been on Risperdal and I’m still upset about how I was not informed of the side effects. I was on stimulants before the antipsychotics and I was on a lot of different drugs. It’s much better being off them. However, going through intense anxiety and anorexia is very hard, but it’s better than being on the drugs.

Andy K Says:

In desperation I tried Risperdal to help with my depression. What a horrible experience! I was moving at the time and could barely function. Some years back I took seroquel and all it did was make me very sedated and sleepy.

bf Says:

As paradoxical as it sounds, Seroquel worked for me during a depressive phase (bipolar). I was on 300mg daily however, it was prescribed to control agitation; it was prescribed more based on symptoms than on diagnosis, I guess. I came off of it when I gained 40 pounds in a matter of months (20lbs in less than 3 weeks).

FredL Says:

Zyprexa works for me as an antidepressant (and no typical antidepressant like Prozac seems to have any effect on me). Zyprexa is the only psych drug that has had any beneficial effect on me, all the others don’t seem to work. It’s weird how these drugs can have such different effects on different people.

Kenny Says:

Seroquel’s many uses include the treatment of migraines and for epilepsy. It does work on some people for some parts of bi-polar disorder. From what I have discovered in my many years of drug cocktails are this. One drug may treat one part of bi-polar but may agitate or cause side effects that you will be put on another drug to fight the side effect and work with the original drug which may have a complete other side effect that a third drug will be prescribed to battle. I have some serious sleep issues and when I do sleep I have seriously scary nightmares. My depression is still in my life and my mania is still there also. I am not suicidal, more homicidal and scared of what I may do at times.

Jackie Dolphy Says:

I think what appalls you most is the overinclusive net drug companies cast in their efforts to push their product. On that front drug companies frequently are the venal behemoths the more excitable and knee-jerk oppositional anti-psychiatric drug campaigners like to claim they are.

No one, ever, should take powerful psychotropic drugs unless they REALLY HAVE TO. These drugs can, and do, have major side-effects.

However, for me, Olanzapine has been a lifesaver. I use in in conjunction with Effexor, and that seems to be the only combination that lifts me out of horrific depression. I get very severe, agitated depression, and the Olanzapine has both a calming and antidepressant effect. As an adjunctive agent, it seems to increase the effectiveness of the Effexor.

At times I will [for a brief period] increase the Olanzapine when I feel a “breakthrough” depression kicking in, to “nuke” it and stop it in its tracks. It seems to work.

Of course you can imagine how drugs companies love to hear anecdotal reports like this in their efforts to push their product. They’re venal because only a small percentage of people receive anti-depressant benefit from anti-psychotics, yet they will try to make out the effectiveness is much higher, and unfortunately doctors and psychiatrists tend to believe what they’re told – just witness the theory and medication fashions that sweep through the psychiatric profession.

family member Says:

So many people complain about the meds, but you have all forgotten it is about the brain – what the brain needs to be fed more of or less of – about how the brain metabolizes dopamine, seratonin, norepinephrine etc and which areas respond to these drugs in any one person is very different from how another one person might respond. I think the idea of doing spect scans and “seeing” on scans where the fast and slow areas of metabolizing are, would help the doctors and scientists greatly, for anyone with a mental illness. Afterall, in any other disease, you can check bloodwork, do biopsies, scans or the like, not just treat with some drug and hope it will work. As a family our personal experience with Risperdal was positive because it did help with the explosive outbursts and the agitation and the delusions and hallucinations. But it also had side effects, one being Parkinson’s pseudo side effect. Which went away when the drug was stopped. Should the drug company be sued over it? No. Should it be reported as a side effect, of course. If everyone sued over every side effect, we would not even have antibiotics available to treat anything!