Weight gain is definitely a serious problem for Zyprexa. My son's pdoc doesn't like it for that reason, but he's willing to stay with it at a low dose.

My son dropped a huge amount of weight about a year ago - going from 148 to 116 in a matter of months. I think he just stopped eating for the most part. Anyway the Zyprexa got him back up his normal weight then on up to 160. He was pretty unhappy in the 140's, so from his point of view the weight gain was a good thing. The pdoc has him down to 5 mg (from 35 mg in March ), and his weight stablized at 160 months ago.

I like Zyprexa for a number of reasons. It's been around for a while, so it's less of an unknown. It went off patent in October, so now he can take a generic - cheaper! Actually his copay is now $0. Since he's on Medicare, I figure it saves the taxpayer a bit. Also, the biggie: it seems to help him with a minimum of side effects.

I looked up Latuda last night. It seems to have lots of good aspects. The cognitive improvement looks good. I notice that akathisia is a problem for 5% of people. My son is prone to akathisia. He's had it on every medication he's taken, including Zyprexa. Zyprexa gives it to him the least. It seems like they like to deny that the atypicals cause akathisia. I figure if they're admitting up front that this is a relatively common side effect of this new atypical, it must be pretty bad.