Risperdal

Hi,

I have a question. Has anyone gone off risperdal and what side effects did you experience? I was on 3 mg for years and my psych cut me back to 2 mg. I have been at that dose for 2 years but now have decided that taking it is not worth the weight gain. I do have an eating disorder so weight gain is scary to me. Over the past month I have tapered the dose down to 1mg. I have just started taking 1mg the last couple of days and I am experiencing a lot of anxiety and uncontrolled thoughts.

I am not schizophrenic or psychotic. I am not certain why I am on the medication to begin with. I am DID and have general anxiety disorder, but I have heard so many reports that risperdal does not help DID.

I know no one here is a doctor, but I was just wondering if anyone else has experience with tapering off risperdal. I cannot find anything about withdrawal effect.

Thanks.

Did you decrease the dosage on your own or did you consult your Psychiatrist?

The effectiveness of Risperdal below 2mg has not been established for the treatment of Psychotic Disorders (including Schizophrenia).

You should know that one of the benefits of Risperdal is that it does not cause as much weightgain as some other anti-psychotics.

Since you have been doing so well with Risperdal I think you should stay at 2mg. It would be better to have targeted therapy for your eating disorder than change your treatment plan because of your eating disorder---that seems like taking a step backwards.

So here are my suggestions:

1.) If you decreased your dosage without consulting your psychiatrist---return to the prescribed level of 2mg on your next dose and call your psychiatrist

2.) Find out why he/she has you on Risperdal in the first place!

3.) If you haven't already share your concerns about weight gain with your Psychiatrist.

I was on risperdol several years ago for a couple years...not "for" DID, but I do have DID. I was taking it for one specific alter's psychosis. I won't get into how that all worked but I will say simply that it did work. However, once the psychosis was no longer an issue, my pdoc kept me on it. She kept thinking that it would "help the voices". The voices are not psychosis so an anti-psychotic did nothing for that. She finally spoke to a DID expert and then tapered me off the risperdol. I did notice a dramatic increase in my anxiety when off of it, however, a very small dose of seroquel at bedtime seems to help with that...along with learning non-med coping skills in therapy.

As an aside, regarding what psyCris said...risperdol may be reported to cause less weight gain than other atypical anti-psychotics, but that does not make the reports true! On risperdol I gained 60 lbs and was diagnosed with type II diabetes. Upon going of risperdol I lost 35 lbs with no effort at all, while on seroquel, I have lost an additional 20 lbs. If your doctor has only prescribed it for DID, then you should know that there are NO meds for DID. Meds are used in DID for other, associated problems, like depression and anxiety, etc. The only way to know what your doctor is thinking is to ask...and I urge you to do exactly that. Your doctor does need to know that you have decreased the dose and why... but you also need to know why it has been prescribed.

Yeah unfortunately the only thing I can rely on there is statistics. It's hard to bring statistics to an individual level because there is so much variance.