Aw thank you Perna

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I was put onto a med called Risperdal.... I was told that it would help with both my bi-polar mania and my psychotic episodes. It has helped with the bi-polar mania part but if anything the things I see and hear are worse than ever!! I am on the verge of a mental breakdown and don't know what to do to control the audio-visual stuff that is going on. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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How long have you been on Risperdal? Antipsychotics should decrease the psychotic symptoms pretty quickly, much faster than antidepressants work on depression (2-3 weeks, even longer than that)

So if it ain't helping you with the psychosis at all, then it might be that it's not the right med for you. :/ By the way, I think doctors usually let you call them if you need help in cases like this?

That's for all the medical stuff.. I think psychosis can be somewhat tolerable when you acknowledge that what you see is not real, but at the same time it is very real to you. Like if wires were put in your head and the wires were connected to a monitor, and you saw or heard something, it would show in the monitor that you are hearing or seeing, or whatever.

So nobody can tell you that you're just "imagining" things.

After all, it's just a disorder in the brain.. And for some time, you can't do anything about it, but it makes it less scary when you think that your brain is not working very well right now, and that's why you hear or see things.

What I do is that whenever I hallucinate or whatever, I keep telling myself that they are merely the product of the temporary disorder in my brain. Emphasis again on the temporary.

When you go see your doctor, and your psychotic symptoms have not decreased, ask if you can change the antipsychotic med. Also, if the symptoms are so severe that you can't take them, you can ask for a tranquilizer or something like that. Maybe 25 mg of Seroquel. It relieves stress a lot, and it's not addictive like tranquilizers can be if you take them regularly.

Anyway, this was my input, hope any of it was helpful. Try to hang in there. It's tough, but you can pull through.