Posted by dbc on July 27, 2008, at 15:55:45
In reply to Re: Does Lamictal have therapeutic value, posted by tedrew on July 27, 2008, at 13:09:55
Im probably not really bi polar, just an atypical depressive with serious anxiety/panic. It certainly has anti-depressant effects for some people. It buffers you from the world and relives some of the features which is more or less what all anti-depressants do.
Does it cause cognitive impairment, yes. That goes with the territory of when you start taking anything that messes with glutamate blockading. To be honest when i was titrating up the dose i felt like a zombie and could barely remember my name. But the effect went away when i hit a steady dose.
The only long term cognitive effects i've noticed is vocabulary seeking, i have the problem of recalling words " oh the words just on the tip of my tongue i cant remember it ugh".Perhaps your doctor was talking about you in terms of side effects and what your tolerance threshold is for them when referring to 200mg because thats pretty baseless. Any doctor thats been in the game for a long time will repeat "everyone is different and i have no way to predict what the outcome will be but i can tell you what possible ones there could be" like a mantra. There are people on 600mg or more for seizures.
Im not sure how experianced you are with ADs outside of SSRIs/SNRIs/etc but as far as the class of drugs go lamictal has very few side effects which is why its used so much.
poster:dbc
thread:842283
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080727/msgs/842392.html