Posted by Ritch on May 15, 2003, at 13:36:10
In reply to Mood-stabilizers other than depakote or lithium, posted by audrey on May 15, 2003, at 10:12:03
> Hello. I'm diagnosed as bi-polar I and borderline personality disorder. Over the past couple of years I started having problems with my moods swinging back and forth between depression and mania much more frequently, with less down time in between. This was after a period of about four years in which I didn't have any extreme episodes. Now that I'm older -- 28 -- my moods are much more severe. My depressions tend to be much more intense, including 2 suicide attempts, and my manic episodes are much less productive and seem to involve anger and rage rather than just staying awake for several days getting a lot of writing or reading done, or scrubbing my bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, or whatever. Now it's all just terribly frightening. So my psychiatrist put me on depakote for a while, which seemed to work pretty well. However, despite being a competetive athlete, training for marathons and triathlons, I gained 30+ pounds. Then we tried lithium, and had the same problem. I've had issues with my body image since I was 10 years old, so this caused other problems! Now I'm on Topamax which is not nearly as effective. I've been losing the weight I gained, but the old demons are back. Does anyone know of any mood stabilizers that don't cause weight gain, but also seem to be effective for most people?
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> A little background -- I also take klonopin to help with anxiety. And I've tried Paxil and several SSRIs, all of which basically caused me to freak out.
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> Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
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> --AudreyI agree with Judy about combining Depakote with another mood stabilizer at perhaps a lower-dose that doesn't kick the weight gain in. From personal experience I found that Depakote+Neurontin worked fairly well. There are some people that have found success with Depakote+Lamictal. There was a recent poster here (can't remember name), that found low-dose lithium and low-dose Depakote to work well. The easiest thing would be to add back *some* Depakote to your Topamax and see if it brings your under control without reversing the weight loss you are enjoying with the TOP.
poster:Ritch
thread:226813
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030514/msgs/226873.html