[Findingreason]

So I have a question for other members of the community on antipsychotic medication...I'm on Risperidone, and I have started reading about the side effects. I learned that trouble speaking, trouble concentrating, and memory problems were all possible on this medication. I have had all three of these problems---not something I used to have trouble with in the past. It's degraded the level of my life dramatically. Between those symptoms, chronic tiredness, severe anxiety and depression, it makes doing any activities of meaningful value to me nearly impossible. I cannot perform at work or school at this time because of it.


I started talking with a friend about it, and she's also on antipsychotics. She said she's had similar problems....and she started having them after she started on her meds.

Have other members of this commuinity had similar problems? It kills me to think part of my life is being stolen by this medication. I may consider stopping this medication and just accept the periodic psychotic episode if these symptoms are really being caused by this...

[Sometimes psychotic]

You can get those issues both from the illness and the meds, its hard to tell which is which---you can always try a lower dose and see if it reduces the issue.

Yes, it can be hard to tell sometimes whether it's the original illness or the AP side effects, but reducing dose/changing AP can suggest if it's one more than the other with some time and trial and error.

Risperidone was very bad for that for me. I took 1mg and felt great the first day; no anxiety whatsoever for the first time in ages. But then the next day, I didn't care about anything whatsoever, and the day after that I lost my ability to think clearly enough to speak. I even went down to 0.5mg, but I couldn't think, talk, drive, work etc so we stopped it. That was the worst one that affected me like that, and at such a low dose too.

But then even off APs for many months/years, I still get problems. My cognition has declined massively, my memory is pretty bad and I have to write everything down or I wouldn't get anything done, and some days I can't even understand English, my native language(!), so I guess then that is just me and not always meds.

Anyway, I recommend speaking to your pdoc about tweaking the dose down to see if that helps, or changing to something else. Personally I found aripirazole/Abilify the least unpleasant AP I've taken, but ymmv. There are also some pdocs here in the UK who will prescribe dementia drugs off-label (like Galantamine, Donepezil or Memantine) for sz cognitive issues, but I don't know about Finland.

I hope you find something that helps. My cognition is very important to me, so I can understand how distressing these issues can be

*Willow*

[Findingreason]

Yeah, I talked with my partner and found that she noticed my cognitive effects started happening around 6 months ago, which was around the time I was put on a higher dose of Risperidone. I had my cognition at good levels not long after my first episode of psychosis in March 2016. I was able to continue in my treatment once I regained myself from it. It really started going downhill more recently, and it's been a somewhat steep slope too. Add in that I'm still adjusting to a new country (from the USA originally), and unable to speak Finnish yet because my learning abilities have been heavily degraded, it just adds to how bad things have gotten for me. I just want my cognition back so I can get going with integrating here and being able to go back to school and eventually, work.

I can't use Abilify or Seroquel because they make way too debilitatingly tired. I'm at 3.5 mg of Risperidone daily, which to my knowledge is a moderate dose of it. I will certainly try to talk to my psychiatrist next week. Hell, I may try to taper myself down, I'm quite stubborn, which may or may not be good for my well being.

[Sometimes psychotic]

I think tapering down a bit might help you. I was on 2 of risperidone and found it effective. When I tapered off entirely at some point(off abilify) I noticed that my ability to read was slowly returning----one thing I noticed though is I was trying to read at a faster rate than I could and it helped to slow down my reading a bit. The thing I'll warn you about is your cognition won't magically return you have to really push to learn. The weird thing is that once I had to go back on abilify due to a relapse I didn't immediately fall back to the cognitive issues. Its like for me that risperidone/abilify was initially blocking the healing of my brain post psychosis and I needed a med break to restore my mind so its not like the meds were causing cognitive issues so much as preventing them from healing. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some negative effect on cognition for every break you have(for some people) so if you were put on a higher dose I can only guess that you had some sort of psychosis.

[Findingreason]

Yeah, they kept raising my risperidone until it reached a point where the worst of my hallucinations and psychotic symptoms disappeared. I still get hallucinations every once in a while, but it's not too bad. Since I have not had any full on psychotic symptoms since about January, it's possible things are improving to where I can try dropping the dose.

I'm glad I started this topic, things I'm reading, I'm researching and it's helping me better understand what has been happening and why...It takes me a while to even think out replies---something I never had problems with before. I took a good 10-15 minutes because my attention is just all over the place and I have to really think about what I'm typing and read it over.

[cogladaid]

Yeah risperidone made me really tired even when combined with an antidepressant. I slept a lot when I was on it and I usually hate sleeping lol.

[Findingreason]

I decided I'm gonna bring myself off the med a couple nights ago, bringing myself down by 1mg and staying at that for a bit to see how I feel. May be a bad idea but meh whatever, I want my cognition back.

[Findingreason]

Just talked to my pdoc and I would say it was...less than helpful. He said that he didn't believe the Risperidone was causing my cognitive symptoms. He said it was probably the depression causing it. That cannot possibly be the case because I have dealt with moderate to severe depression most of my life and only the cognitive problems were more recently---like the last 6-8 months, around the time my Risperidone was started/increased. I think I'm gonna go on with my plan to taper down slowly to see what happens with my cognition. I may be stubborn and strong willed, but I don't believe I need them to go on...I'll have people keep an eye on me as I told Willow I would in Roll Call. I just would like some pdoc support but nope. Oh well.

I probably annoy people here on the forums with my behaviors...

[epthe2]

Originally Posted by Findingreason

Just talked to my pdoc and I would say it was...less than helpful. He said that he didn't believe the Risperidone was causing my cognitive symptoms. He said it was probably the depression causing it. That cannot possibly be the case because I have dealt with moderate to severe depression most of my life and only the cognitive problems were more recently---like the last 6-8 months, around the time my Risperidone was started/increased. I think I'm gonna go on with my plan to taper down slowly to see what happens with my cognition. I may be stubborn and strong willed, but I don't believe I need them to go on...I'll have people keep an eye on me as I told Willow I would in Roll Call. I just would like some pdoc support but nope. Oh well.

I probably annoy people here on the forums with my behaviors...

Psychiatrists, sadly, are usually not very helpful about coming off neuroleptic meds. A word of caution... even a slow taper down off any neuroleptic drug may result in significant withdrawal symptoms. Read up about the withdrawal symptoms so you won't be caught off guard when you start to experience them, if you do try to taper down.

Although schizophrenia itself can cause cognitive problems, neuroleptics do, too. They have a lot of side effects, and unfortunately, over time they can damage your body, including your brain. There have been research studies done about their link to metabolic syndrome in humans. The best thing you can do is to become better informed about them. Read all about them and learn as much as you can about them.

This is just my opinion, but I think neurolptics may help to tranquilize a patient during an acute psychotic break, but then the patient needs behavioral therapy to learn how to cope with and adjust to their illness. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me more than neuroleptics ever did.

[Findingreason]

Originally Posted by epthe2

Psychiatrists, sadly, are usually not very helpful about coming off neuroleptic meds. A word of caution... even a slow taper down off any neuroleptic drug may result in significant withdrawal symptoms. Read up about the withdrawal symptoms so you won't be caught off guard when you start to experience them, if you do try to taper down.

Although schizophrenia itself can cause cognitive problems, neuroleptics do, too. They have a lot of side effects, and unfortunately, over time they can damage your body, including your brain. There have been research studies done about their link to metabolic syndrome in humans. The best thing you can do is to become better informed about them. Read all about them and learn as much as you can about them.

This is just my opinion, but I think neurolptics may help to tranquilize a patient during an acute psychotic break, but then the patient needs behavioral therapy to learn how to cope with and adjust to their illness. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me more than neuroleptics ever did.

Yeah. Heck, if I was okay with switching meds instead, he probably would not have wanted to switch them because he didn't believe they were causing the side effects. I have done some reading up about withdrawal symptoms. I started tapering my dose about 3-4 days ago and so far no symptoms to note of yet. And that was with a 1mg drop in dose.

I do indeed worry about the side effects and long term effects. To my knowledge APs have some of the highest profile of side effects and adverse effects of any meds I've seen. I always research my meds I'm on because knowing these things is important. Fortunately I don't have schizophrenia, but I do get delusions and hallucinations periodically, as well as episodes. Either way, I know I am not half as sharp as I was even 2-3 years ago, and I want to see if this will help me.

When I've had delusions get bad it's been hard to tell what's real, but hallucinations are pretty easy for me to dismiss as such. Though APs have made their occurrence less than they used to. Maybe that's why I'm in denial that I even experience them...I've been living without them a lot more lately.

I'm so frustrated that I'm not thinking clearly. I know I'm not...which is just making matters more difficult. My emotions about all of this are all over the place so what I'm thinking at one part of the day can change later in the day. Mood swings suck.

Originally Posted by Sometimes psychotic

I think tapering down a bit might help you. I was on 2 of risperidone and found it effective. When I tapered off entirely at some point(off abilify) I noticed that my ability to read was slowly returning----one thing I noticed though is I was trying to read at a faster rate than I could and it helped to slow down my reading a bit. The thing I'll warn you about is your cognition won't magically return you have to really push to learn. The weird thing is that once I had to go back on abilify due to a relapse I didn't immediately fall back to the cognitive issues. Its like for me that risperidone/abilify was initially blocking the healing of my brain post psychosis and I needed a med break to restore my mind so its not like the meds were causing cognitive issues so much as preventing them from healing. Keep in mind there is supposed to be some negative effect on cognition for every break you have(for some people) so if you were put on a higher dose I can only guess that you had some sort of psychosis.

I can relate to this post. It took me awhile to regain my cognition from my year long break from reality. It took me about a year to recover and I didn't start to recover it until I got off of Risperdone and on Geodon. Our hippocampus is our center of memory and its easily effected by stress. It starts to shrink when exposed to long term stress which brought on dementia like symptoms for me. You said you suffer from depression and anxiety and that might be part of the problem here. Maybe you could ask your doctor for a benzo like Xanax or Klonopin for PRN (when needed). If anxiety is plaguing you throughout the day you could try an ssri or snri. How long have you lived in Finland? Do you think the change of scenery could be increasing your depression and anxiety?