[LylaW]

My sister schizophrenia has relapse suddenly we immidiately bring her to the nearest psychiatrist. The doctor prescribed those 3 drugs to be consumed morning, afternoon, evening and at night.

But the problem is that the medication that she consumes before this (which i don't remember) influence her hormonal cycles that making her periods longer than usual, it can last to 2 months nonstop. She is advised to stop consuming her meds by her obgyn doctor.

After consuming clorillex, noprenia and hexymer, her periods still haven't stop since before consuming those, and now she is under paranoia that her blood keep decreasing and that she will lost all her blood sometimes. She refused to consume her meds, and honestly I don't know whether it has any effects because after consuming the meds she keep complaining about the headache, stiffness, and how her mind are drowsy. She keep angry at us for asking her to consume the meds, even though we already giving her supplements for blood she still under paranoia that she is losing blood.

She is asking to be bring to the hospital so she can having blood transfusion.
We as her family don't know except easing her fear so we are gonna bring her to the hospital tomorrow so she can have proper check up.

[still_crazy]

hi. I'm from the US, so the brand names weren't familiar to me. I look it up, and she's been prescribed clozapine, risperidone, and an anti-cholinergic drug.

clozapine and risperidone are both "atypical" antipsychotics. Its kind of unusual to see clozapine with another tranquilizer, but it happens. What are her doses, do you know?

The Hexymer is for side effects, as best I can tell. With high enough doses of any tranquilizer--"atypical" or the older ones--people get muscle stiffness, tremor, etc., and anti-cholinergices decrease these reactions.

I'm not any kinda doctor, but risperidone can raise prolactin levels a lot, which can mess with hormones and cause all kinds of problems. The clozapine can be densely sedating, and now and then people have fatal reactions to it (in the US, they require extensive blood work for clozapine-treated people...). Seizures seem to be another very serious concern with ongoing clozapine treatment.

I don't have any advice for you ((sorry)), except maybe see about a different tranquilizer. here in the US, clozapine is for treatment-resistant Schizophrenia. Its effective, but it comes at a cost. Adding risperidone seems like it would complicate things a lot and maybe lead to more side effects, especially with the prolactin issue involved.

I hope your family+your sister's doctors can get this all straightened out. :-)

[LylaW]

Originally Posted by still_crazy

hi. I'm from the US, so the brand names weren't familiar to me. I look it up, and she's been prescribed clozapine, risperidone, and an anti-cholinergic drug.

clozapine and risperidone are both "atypical" antipsychotics. Its kind of unusual to see clozapine with another tranquilizer, but it happens. What are her doses, do you know?

The Hexymer is for side effects, as best I can tell. With high enough doses of any tranquilizer--"atypical" or the older ones--people get muscle stiffness, tremor, etc., and anti-cholinergices decrease these reactions.

I'm not any kinda doctor, but risperidone can raise prolactin levels a lot, which can mess with hormones and cause all kinds of problems. The clozapine can be densely sedating, and now and then people have fatal reactions to it (in the US, they require extensive blood work for clozapine-treated people...). Seizures seem to be another very serious concern with ongoing clozapine treatment.

I don't have any advice for you ((sorry)), except maybe see about a different tranquilizer. here in the US, clozapine is for treatment-resistant Schizophrenia. Its effective, but it comes at a cost. Adding risperidone seems like it would complicate things a lot and maybe lead to more side effects, especially with the prolactin issue involved.

I hope your family+your sister's doctors can get this all straightened out. :-)

Thank you so much for replying. Yes, I'm not from the US but from Indonesia and the cost of drugs especially for anti-psychosis drugs is quite expensive here. We don't have the best psychiatrist in this country either since mental illness is still not yet treated seriously as a disease.
It will be hard to told my family about the side effects probability but I should give it a try since it is best to at least know and can do something about it rather than being ignorant about it.

About the dose my sister get, I'm actually have no clue right since she is in the hospital and diagnosed with anemia so she is having blood transfusion. Is this what you mean by "requiring a lot of blood work" as a side effect of Clozapine?

[still_crazy]

hi. clozapine can cause serious problems. here in the US, they have a lot of restrictions on dispensing clozapine. I think people on clozapine are required to do blood work very often for the first 6 months or so (I could be wrong), and then less frequently after that. Not to scare you, but now and then people do die from the ill effects of clozapine ((with proper blood monitoring, that is rare)).

Its weird to me that they'd have her on clozapine when she has other problems going on, but I"m not a doctor (clearly). I did read that some countries use clozapine more often, in more people, than here in the United States. I guess prescribing practices vary from place to place.

On the plus side, when clozapine works--and it works for a lot of people, even those with severe and/or "treatment-resistant" schizophrenia (schizophrenia that hasn't responded to 2+ different antipsychotics)--it can work beautifully.

There's a lower rate of tardive dyskinesia with clozapine than with other antipsychotics. In addition, there's some research that suggests that clozapine reduces suicide rates in people with schizophrenia. Some doctors say it can improve overall quality of life, also.

Sorry about your situation. On the plus side, she's in a hospital, so I imagine they're able to keep a close eye on her and do all the blood work that's required at this point. Sometimes, doctors will put a person on a high dose of a tranquilizer and then reduce the dose over time, as the person stabilizes and recovers. Maybe that's what your sister's doctor has in mind?

I hope things get better. :-)