Latuda

So after a horrible experience with risperdal, which left me pacing around my room crying, my psych nurse got my insurance to approve Latuda which works great! Almost no side effects other then sleepiness at first then hyperness. The obssession with Satan is gone. I still have the conversations with famous people in my head, but I kinda wanna keep that a little bit. Also my mood has been better. very happy things are better

I'm glad things are better.

Thanks!

My son had an awful experience on Risperdal too. They gave it to him in the hospital after his suicide attempt. It was a teaching hospital, and during the month he was there he had three different "psychiatrists" (who I think were actually students rotating through the job just to learn about it).

They kept raising and raising the dose of Risperdal until he was just a lump. He was thinking and talking so slowly. You would ask him a question and about a minute later he'd start answering, but he'd stop talking mid-sentence. Even at the incredibly high dose, he still had symptoms of psychosis!

One "pdoc" said they couldn't release him because he still had some paranoia. I told them he always has paranoia! I think they thought they could make him "normal" with the drug.

[One funny think, though. He was pretty paranoid about the hospital and the doctors. It made perfect sense to me why he would be. They kept saying they would release him in "three to five days." Then when three to five days were up, they'd say they needed another three to five days! Why do that to someone who is profoundly incapable of trust?]

Risperdal made me so anxious. I think hospitals like to keep people as long as they possibly can to get money lol. I'm sorry your son had such a bad hospital experience. I was first hospitalized at a Harvard teaching hospital in Boston. They were pretty good there.

It was weird, because the hospital he was in actually was one of those ones that holds you for 2 or 3 days, then ejects you whether you're ready or not. I don't know why they got such a firm grip on my son. I sent my sister out to retrieve him (he was 750 miles from home), but she let the doctors wow her and came home without him. So I went down there and told them I wasn't leaving without my son, and they reluctantly let him go.

It was a frustrating experience for all of us, and I can easily see why it might feed paranoia in a person who was prone to it.

Costello, I'm not trained in psyciatry of psychology. I have talked with many, many psychiatrists and Three psychologists over my years though. One psychologist I saw for close to a decade. The one I have now, I have seen for a couple months. I think they would agree with me that at some point, the "apron" strings need to be cut. I mean, unhealthy maternal attachment can disrupt healthy growth for an individual. Perhaps this was what the Drs saw at the hospital.

You seem VERY worried about your boy, who is in his upper 20s. I think you might want to consider this as a possibility and talk to a professional about it.

I'm regret that I see this, I do see it though, from your posts here.

I think your young man will surprise you at how well he can survive without your assistence. Maybe you should allow him the opportunity to prove his own capability for survival. It might help improve his self esteem.

Just my personal untrained observation.

brook

Hmmm... Well, I appreciate your input, but I have to say I disagree that this is the time to "cut the apron strings." I say this because I've been at this for six and a half years now. I've taken the hands off approach several times now, and it's lead to increasingly large disasters each time. Then I'm called in to extricate him and clean up the mess. If he would have his disaster then fix the problem himself I'd be okay with it. But once the disaster hits, he's in a state of utter incoherence to the point that someone sane has to step in and take over. That someone is me.

It's extremely difficult to be the parent in this kind of situation. You're constantly walking a tight rope between doing too much and doing too little. And trust me, people criticize all the time - from both sides. You're here saying I'm too involved, but I've also had people put me down for not being involved enough. I've had to grow a thick skin and make my best judgment calls.

If he were clearly mentally disabled - let's say he had an IQ of 60 - it would be a no-brainer. Needs constant help for life.

If he were clearly "normal"... again, no-brainer. Let him figure it out.

He's in that gray area where he can take care of himself to a certain extent, but he still needs assistance. If I step back now, he might soar, but frankly I've tried that several times, and experience indicates that it's far more likely that "social service" agencies will have to step in in the form of homeless shelters, the community mental health center, the state hospital, and the police. Between bouts with government workers, he'll be exploited by losers who realize he's not quite in control of his mind but he has an income they can cheat him out of. This has happened.

Ultimately I hope that my son will be completely independent of both me and the mental health system and living the life that he wants. I still think there's hope this will happen. When he moved into my home in Nov. 2010, he weighted 116 pounds (down from 148 in a matter of months). He had been tricked into giving his car away to a neighbor's bf and was also giving her a lot of his money. He was hallucinating, both visually and auditorally. He was completely delusional - living almost entirely in a fantasy world of his own making. He didn't sleep at all for the first 3 days and nights and insisted that my father's ghost was inhabiting my basement.

Now he's in control of his mind. He's handling his own money, doing his own shopping, getting himself to his own appointments, and has a car and a job. I see a great deal of hope for continued growth. BUT... we've been at this point before, only to have it all fall apart. His pdoc says he has a long road ahead of him, and I agree. I intend to do everything in my power to be sure that this time he's soundly on his feet. When he falls, he falls hard. And each time he comes away with lots of traumatic memories. He doesn't need any more trauma. He needs some success. If there's something I can do right now to minimize trauma and increase success, I'll do it.

And as to what the doctors in the hospital saw: since they had very little contact with me and lots of contact with my son - who was pretty out of it at the time - I'm assuming they were making their therapeutic recommendations based on their perceptions of him, not on any perceived inadequacies in me or my parenting. At least I hope so. It would border on malpractice to forcibly confine an adult man to a mental hospital for over a month because the doctor thought his mother was overly involved in his life.

Yes, I care about my son. Sorry. And I don't have quite the faith in "professionals" which you have. I have a good mind and a good education and very good instincts. I don't need to hand my life over to a "professional."

See my comments above about my previous attempts to do just that. Utter failure.

I wasn't aware of your sons Intelligence quotient score. It seems your right. I recind my opinions.

He has normal intelligence. I was trying to illustrate that he falls somewhere between clearly impaired and clearly not impaired.