Posted by med_empowered on March 28, 2006, at 20:24:22
In reply to Re: risperidone as speed psychosis treatment, posted by notfred on March 28, 2006, at 19:37:41
I think the problem here is that "amphetamine psychosis" is usually pretty short lived. The person has a freak-out for a while, then might have lingering paranoia and anxiety issues, and then usually goes down more or less to baseline. Since lots of docs use antipsychotics "off-label" these days, maybe the doc is medicating for paranoia/agitation (since using an antipsychotic would avoid use of a benzodiazepine). Anyway...the problem is that long-term AP treatment has all kinds of side effects, even with the new drugs, and it costs a good bit of $$$ that could be spent on other better, more well-tolerated therapies that won't turn you into a zombie.
My guess is that this young woman probably needs some help with anxiety, mood, and sleeping, possibly also with lingering low-grade paranoia or something. APs are just going to make her shut up; they're not a long-term solution.
I think its great that you're advocating for you daughter here. Psychiatric help can be immensely helpful but for some reason mental patients have to deal with a lot more sh!t then other kinds of patients. I mean, if you break your leg a doc just fixes it and goes about their business. If you have a mood disorder or drug problem, a lot of times docs feel like they can do **whatever** and you should deal with it because, well you're (crazy, drug-addicted, strange, whatever). Its simply ridiculous. In my own experiences with shrinks, I've learned sometimes you have to stop thinking "oh, they're a doctor..do what the doctor says" and start thinking "this is MY life and MY treatment".
poster:med_empowered
thread:625556
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060322/msgs/625709.html