Amen to that!! There should seriously always be a backup psychiatrist in each office...an apprentice or whatever familiar with all of the cases so that if the p-doc does go on vacation, they can just phone back and forth if it's too hard for the backup to handle. But they should not leave us with the only choice of going to the ER!! That's part of the reason why health care in this country is so screwed. Even for those of us who have some insurance. Some of us avoid at all costs going to the ER (duh, like it's fun for us to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars when we'd rather be at home), but it's our only option, especially in a psychiatric emergency...that could be solved probably in half an hour if our p-doc were available.

I'm no doc, so don't listen to my advice, but I was on Seroquel for months and then for 2 weeks things got so awful I went to urgent care, barely able to walk. Docs there told me it was probably one of my meds since the blood test was neg for anemia. I knew it was Seroquel. I went off of it after the 3rd week that p-nurse wouldn't listen to me about feeling severely depressed.

Ever since then I've felt pretty darn good...some half days that were down, but all in all, fairly hypomanic. So, as with all things, if you tell your docs that something is making you feel awful and you want to come off of it, and they disagree, do so at your own risk, but do it VERY slowly and cautiously. And I don't necessarily think you should. I just had a good response to coming off of my bad drug, but I know the docs will say it's causing mania and that is bad. Blah. Can't win no matter what you do.