Lamictal was touted as the Holy Grail mood stabilizer for bipolar - meaning, preventing episodes on both ends of the spectrum, but has not lived up to the initial promise. It is primary use is preventing bipolar depression. As a monotherapy, it is primarily used in Bipolar II disorder where patients do not go into frank mania. If you query [lamictal mania] on PubMed, your results will focus on depression prevention despite putting [mania] into the query - see lamictal mania - PubMed - NCBI.

In Silicon Valley, among "designer psychiatrists", Lamictal is known as the drug of choice of CEOs because it ups their energy.

Most people on this forum know that SSRI's are dangerous for them - not "some", but "most".

I obtain my data primarily from peer-reviewed publications, but also from speaking to qualified medical professionals. Lamictal has been known to cause mania - happened to me twice, the first time, two years ago, in combination of other agents, caused a mixed state and a very major suicide attempt with several days on a ventilator. That was at 200 mg monotherapy when I was mis-dx'd with BPII. In 2016 I tried again, a very low dose of 25 mg, as part of a cocktail that included some Lithium and FDA max dose of Geodon, and it induced elevated mood and insomnia nonetheless and had to be stopped but the sequelae of that short trial were long-lived and highly negative.

needadvicenow5500 - you are acting as a moderator that you are not. If you think that my posts are out of line, reach out to the forum moderators. Lamictal has been dubbed a "bipolar antidepressant" and its main promise is that as opposed to SSRI, SNRI and Wellbutrin (which is in a class of its own) antidepressants, it won't cause mania (but sometimes it does - just not as frequently as these agents). It is not used widely in the prevention of mania and any person who pays attention to detail and who reads this forum with its posts and signatures would realize that people who need treatment and prevention of mania are taking much more "serious" drugs than Lamictal. To take both an SSRI and Lamictal and nothing to act against elevated mood and against the elevating properties of these drugs is almost unheard of - it is a very weird cocktail and while one can imagine that such cocktail would be prescribed as a last resort to somebody in a very deep depression (and still that would be a questionable prescription), the OP appears to be doing OK, so one wonders why OP is taking this very strange cocktail that nobody else on this forum takes - I have near photographic memory and synesthesia with special memorial abilities and from all my reading this forum I have never before seen such a cocktail, so I pointed out that it is a very, very weird cocktail.

Another thing that precisely because Lamictal is supposed to be effective against eliminating the depressive phase of bipolar disorder, why also take an SSRI? Usually, it is Lamictal against the low mood plus something else against the high mood - that is a much more typical cocktail.


sarahsweets - the first hit on Google for the query [which medication is prescribed most often for bipolar disorder] is this:

The most widely used drugs for the treatment of bipolar disorder include lithium carbonate and valproic acid (also known as Depakote or generically as divalproex). Lithium carbonate can be remarkably effective in reducing mania, although doctors still do not know precisely how it works.Nov 8, 2017
Bipolar Disorder Treatment - WebMD

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Having read my signature, most would realize that after all the failed medication trials I have been through, I must be, my necessity, highly educated in this field.