Posted by katekite on June 3, 2002, at 10:53:59
In reply to Re: Need lots of advice » danibell25, posted by Chloe on June 3, 2002, at 9:25:31
Thanks, beliala for answering all my picky questions.
I agree absolutely with the last poster.
One week is not long enough. How would you even know what dose you can tolerate?
Stick with the tegretol, or switch to the near cousing trileptal, and continue upping the dose until you reach side effects that won't go away, then drop it down to a level you can tolerate. Then wait 3 weeks or so to see if it really truly does help symptoms. (so this takes at least 6 weeks). Then if it does help symptoms, but isn't enough, consider adding a low dose of a second mood stabilizer. You didn't give depakote an adequate trial so that is high on the list.
After getting the dose of tegretol right, I would recommend lamictal for its mood boosting properties, but again, don't try it until you've found the best dose of tegretol for you. Depakote would be the other one to try early on. At the moment you are not looking for happiness, you are looking for decreased serious suicide feelings and decreased anger/agitation. You sound like you are in a mixed hypomanic episode at the moment (the decreased sleep but very unhappy, agitated).
It does sound like the antipsychotics will not do the job alone for you. Maybe someday it will turn out that a low dose of one or another will help, but I wouldn't start there.
One way to get a psychiatrist sooner than August would be the next time you feel suicidal to visit your local emergency room (that being what they are there for). You of course don't have to agree to being admitted, but they will darn well find you a psychiatrist to see.
After you've given depakote, tegretol (or you could switch to trileptal if side effects are too much from tegretol), and lamictal, then there are others. Since adequate trials of those will take 18 weeks if you did it back to back, there's plenty of time to research other drugs for down the road and no need to even be thinking about them now.
Lastly, you need to be seeing a therapist at least once a week if not more often at this point, given your sleep deficit is dangerous and your continual feelings of suicidal-ness are not good. Just because you have bpd does not make your suicidal feelings less dangerous than any other person without bpd. You need someone watching over you and checking in with you on a daily basis. If you don't have any professional doing that, get one right away.
kate
poster:katekite
thread:108359
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020602/msgs/108527.html