Antipsychotics
 

I have a pretty big and troublesome issue, to be precise someone (I dont know who ) talked about my cognitive problems and anxiety to the generale physician, who in turn request a mandatory visit by a psichystrast.
The psychistrast is very ignorant and arrogant about the subject (He claims that is not possibile to be comcussed without losing consciousness or with out brain bleeding so my symptoms must be psychosomatic and alla in my Head ) and Now I am forced against my will to take antipsychotics drugs.( I live n italy by the way)
I was very happy because I had recovered in the Last few days, but now I have the terror to compromise my brain due to the drugs and the stress for the situation.
It is possibile for that kind if drugs to worsen my cognitive problem? What you suggest me to do about this situation?

Antipsychotics could most certainly make the damage worse. They are known to kill neurons by interfering with the mitochondria in the cell. Weakened neurons which are not dead could very well be killed by these neurotoxins. Antipsychotics themselves cause permanent brain damage with prolonged use. Avoid this at all costs, especially if you don't want to do it.

Just out of curiosity, how are you forced to take these drugs? If your doctor is incompetent you need to find a new one.

Hey Danielson, as a psychologist i am wondering which antypsychotic they gave you and why. There are several classes of antipsychotics so they have different effects. Did they give it to you for anxiety or did the doc think you were imagening the situation? Or was it for anotger specific symptom?

Idk about the laws in italy. Here a patient can only be forced when there are serious indications that he will hurt himself or others. And even then the request should be taken to a judge and assesed by a team of psychiatrists and psychologist so idk how they would force you so fast.

The antipsycothic is called abilify, how dangereous it is? How long can it take to do brain damage?
The reason is that they think that I am imagining this, and I suppose that I could hurt someone due to anxiety and outbursts.
I also find the thing absurd and didi not know it was possibile, could you please try to inform a bit about italian law in this regard?
I can't due to cognitive struggles.

Abilify is not one of the scarier anti-psychotics. Nobody can say how you will respond to it.

My doctor put me on Zyprexa for a short term to get past a high level of symptoms. No big deal.

-Which are the scariest ones?

-what kind of symptoms? Emotional/anxiety ones? Was it useful and didi it have side effects?

Drugs.com | Prescription Drug Information, Interactions & Side Effects or similar medical websites will have details on medicines & most supplements..

I know but I have trouble reading long piece of text.

Abilify is ok. I find sulpiride much scarier. The thing with psychiatric medicine is that everone reacts different to it. You can try it and see if it has any side effects for you or not. For ex. I take mirtazapine for sleep. I don't have any side effects whatsoever and feel perfectly normal, but someone i know has terrible side effects from it. If you are worried i would suggest talking with your doctor. There are many other medicine that can help anxiety if you really don't want to take antipsychotics.

Also think for yourself. There is a different between needing medicine and not wanting medicine. I don't want sleep meds, but i need it. Do you feel that you are extremely anxious, why not try it. And it would probably be a good idea to talk to a psychologist if you really suffer from anxiety. Medicine help but in the long run you need to learn how to deal with it and a psychologist can help.

Btw if you are scared of potential brain damage from any medicine, this doesnt occur if you take it for a short term. Any medicine has the potential to do harm if you take it forever in high doses. So you should be fine with just trying.

Stay strong!

I'm forced to take antipsychotics against my will and also potentially against my well being unfortunately, that's the atrocious law here where I live.
I have not experienced thinking problems like the ones of my PCS, but I suffer from side effects like restlessness and severe difficulty concentrating.
By the way, why do you think that Abilify is okay unlike other antipsychotics?

Sorry for being annonying with my countless questions, but what do you mean by short term?
A matter of weeks, months or years is necessary to do brain damage, especially to a sensitive brain like a PCS one?

Personally i have no knowledge about effects of antypsychotics on pcs because i never had patient being put on antipsychotics. I know benzos are not good for tbi but alsi not horrible. A lot of patients take benzos because they need it. Short term is more like several months. There isn't a definitive answer for that. Everybody reacts different. Some can take it for years withouth problems

Just to know, that kind of neuron damage will be visible on imaging exams such as an MRI?

There is no imaging that will show microscopic neuronal damage. They usually make these claims based on testing mouse or rat brains and putting the animal on huge doses then dissecting the brain and sticking it under a microscope.

My dr at rush university brought up doing low dose of anti-psychotic meds. After 6 years, I have tried most drugs and he’s had success with some patients with this. He’s very knowleadgeable about Tbi’s. But for **** sake, don’t be forced to take any drugs you don’t want to.

Antipsychotics did a lot of damage to my brain.
After taking them I started to experience very severe cognitive problems, much worse than before, I'm basically unable to do any thinking and I cannot string a coerhent sentence together while trying to speak.
I also started to have total anedhonia, basically I cannot feel pleasure in any way, not even with sexual activities.

The psychiatrist tell me that is impossibile to suffer a concussion without losing consciousness so my cognitive struggles (both the actual ones and the ones before taking antipsychotics but after the car crash) must be imaginary.

At the same time, I have found a neurologist who is not knowledgeable about antipsychotics but believes that my cognitive impairmente may be due the car crash and he ordered an MRI with tensor diffusion, I will do it in a couple of weeks.
It is reliable to see if I suffered a concussion in the car crash?
Or it is possible that damage will not show up on it?

That’s good he knows about DTI but unless you have severe TBI, decent chance concussion symptoms won’t show up on MRI. My MRI with DTI didn’t show anything and I have vision issues and the classic PCS symptoms.

My dr wanted me to try 25mg seroquel. My pain and fog are really bad which leads to suicidal ideation. I’m going to pursue hormone therapy and go that route before I try it. I don’t think it will lead to the clarity I’m seeking.

As stated previously, your psychiatrist is ignorant regarding concussions. He may be ignorant about the meds he prescribes, too.

The DTI MRI may indicate a brain injury but if it does not, that does not mean you did not suffer a concussion.

Where do you live that allows others to force you to take anti-psychotic drugs?

I live in Italy.

What can I do in order to prove to my psychiatrist that a concussion can happen without losing consciousness? Currently he says that I'm deluded and mentally ill for believing that it is possible.

Also, the neurologist (who is actually a neurosurgeon now that I think about it) said to me that if the DTI MRI will not show anything, than it means that I have not suffered any brain trauma, so i guess that he is ignorant too.
That sadden me a lot because I was hoping to have found a competente doctor finally.

Are you in a mental hospital? How can they force you to take these drugs? This is a travesty. Need more info on your cause of concussion, symptoms, how long...the literature is out there so no reason for these doctors to be ignorant of them. My Dr at mayo clinic who was italian also said if MRI didn't show brain injury that I don't have TBI. It's just nonsense.

Danielson,

Doctors aren’t all to sharp about head injuries, I thought many times about giving my Neuro a big fat concussion so he could have some experience with one before he told others they were making it up.

Don’t get discouraged, if you know the accident changed you you have to believe yourself and find ways to move forward.

It is very doable.

Bud

I'm not in a mental hospital.

I had a car crash in May and developed many symptoms such as cognitive and intellectual deficits, memory problems, headaches, strange feeling inside the head like "pressure", sensibility to noises etc...
I recovered from them in August, albeit I had a couple of small intensity relapses lasting a few days each.

Then in December someone (I don't know who) made me vist by a psichiatrist because I was unwilling to left home until I was sure that it will not give me another relapse, so I was forced to take antipsychotis meds because I was "delusional" since according to them you cannot have cognitive problems without losing conoiuosness, so I must be crazy for believing it.

I'm not taking them since early january but their effects didn't stop and I'm afraid it will be permanent.
Said effects are huge congitive problems (worse than the concussion ones, i'm basically unable to speak and communicate verbally with people) and the inability to feel pleasure at all, not even with sexual activities.

I have all of those problems and was also in car accident. The head pressure is torture. I’d say try to find neuro ophthalmologist to rule out vision issues and get hormones tested.

Can someone please give me some advice about how to prove to my psychiatris that is possible to suffer a concussion without losing consciousness?

I don't know if many Drs would read an article or website, but your best chance tot convince a Dr is to find the info on a "professional" medical site.
oh..here ya go--
25 Search Engines Every Medical Professional Should Bookmark | NursingDegree.net

[However, many patients do not lose consciousness but instead manifest symptoms and signs such as] more-
Sports-Related Concussion - Injuries; Poisoning - Merck Manuals Professional Edition

Danielson,

Maybe you just need to find a different psychiatrist. Few doctors of any flavor can be convinced to believe something different.

An ignorant or incompetent doctor will always be ignorant.

What do they call a medical school student who graduates at the bottom of his class? Doctor.

Thanks a lot, I will give it a try.

The fact is that I'm forced to see this psyichtriast, he is the one that forced me to tke antipsychotics.

I had the DTI MRI, it comes back clean.
I'm very sad because now the doctors will use it as an evidence to say that my problem is psychological.

A clean DTI MRI does not rule out an injury. A positive DTI MRI is very accurate but false negatives are not uncommon. A healed injury can still cause symptoms without showing the DTI abnormalities.

Maybe the language issue is a problem but the way you explain your symptoms leaves issues to consider. You come across as far more anxious than objectively aware. It is very difficult to self-diagnose most of the symptoms you have stated other than headaches. Reading about concussions can trigger an over concern for such symptoms such that every time one forgets, they attribute it to the concussion.

A professionally administered Neuro Psychological Assessment is considered the gold standard for diagnosing neurological deficits.

Yeah language is surely a problem, hovewer I don't think that my current symptoms are due to the concussion but due to the antipsychotics.
Mi cognitive struggles are surely there and real, I can't understand simple concepts and I slur my speech unable to formulate coerenth sentences.
The psychiatris has prescribed me a neuro psychological assesment.

Trust me, get your hormones tested. I had to do 5 hour STIM test. My MRI with DTI was fine but I just found out I have hypopituarism from the STIM test. My Testosterone levels are fine so even a basic hormonal panel would have missed that I’m deficient in growth hormone.

There are maybe a few endocrinologist in the U.S. that are aware of the hormone/TBI relationship. I’d do whatever you can to find one.

I think the NP test is only good for those with more moderate to severe TBI’s. So called mild TBI’s fly under the radar and get labeled as depressed or anxious.

Danielson complains of memory and cognitive issues. If he has them, they would show on an NP. If he is just overly attentive to normal memory or thought struggles, his scores will be in the normal ranges.

NPs don't diagnose TBI intensity. They just indicate brain dysfunction. Even the experts do not understand why a person can be out cold for hours and have no NPA diagnosed dysfunction and another can have a minor ding and have serious NPA diagnosed dysfunctions.

Hi, I'm asking for your help because there is something that I don't understand and that seems suspicious to me, altough I'm not able to explain it well.
Basically today my mother take the appointment for the neuropshycological tests, but my appointment is at 16.00 PM, which seems odd to me since I have read that the test should take a whole day.
I have fear that they are going to have some brief and very superficial test not accurate enough to show my symptoms and dysfunctions.
What should I expect? and what can I do to make sure that they are going to perform tests useful for my situation?

Some doctors do a pre test to determine what sub tests to use. There are many sub tests in a neuro psychological assessment. Some will break the test up over different days.

I had a short version that only took 90 minutes plus three that took 4 hours or more.

It does not sound like you have much control over what they are going to do. Relax and just do as they ask.

It's difficult to relax and trust them since it seems that nobody is interested in my situation or in my health.
I wanna be sure that they are going to do something that can detect my mild cognitive impairment, I don't want to spend money to do some superficial test that will only tell me if I'm at dementia level (which I already know I am not) or not.

From what I understand all the NP tests are administered a little bit differently depending on the person administering it. For example, my testing was one 50 min appointment followed by a 3 hour and then another 2 hour. After those several were done, then it is an 8 hour followed by a 4 hour and then the review of results six weeks later. It seems to me that perhaps your is just an intake appointment. :)

Stop trying to self diagnose.

MCI vs dementia???? What is that?

I have some severe cognitive impairments. I've had problems for 50 years. Life goes on. I lived a full life until the last 10 years when I had to slow down in some areas.

I think you are your own worst enemy. Your PCS is just a small part of your problems. You over analyze yourself and create bigger problems.

Let the professionals assess you. If you try to force the tests, they will show you are not responding naturally and the results will be in doubt.

My understanding is that the atypical antipsychotics doubled the rate of death due to having more of certain side effects like type II diabetes.

In any case, my uncle had a stroke and was given abilify for depression. Long story short he started gambling away all his and his wife's money and it almost destroyed their marriage. Come to find out the FDA knew about the risk of compulsive gambling, sexual behaviors etc. due to the drug for years but didn't go public until they were forced to do so. Meanwhile the Canadian health authorities had already been warning about it for years.

Abilify may be somewhat less neurotoxic, but at the end of the day you are causing brain damage even for a person without an injured brain by taking this drug, it just might take a little longer. A person with a brain already damaged by kinetic forces will tend to fare much worse.

Antipsychotics actually worsen psychosis over the long run. They work by simply disabling the frontal lobe in a general way. They are not specific treatments for root biological problems. The drugs were originally developed to kill parasites. Someone with a damaged frontal lobe who then takes what is already a disabling agent is going to have lots of really bad effects.

Sadly, as I expected, all of his cognitive symptoms have now worsened, and he now notes anhedonia, something already problematic for TBI victims and a hallmark effect of these drugs.

It is interesting to note that many of the things said to help TBI symptoms positively affect the mitochondria of neurons (HBOT, NIRLT), whereas antipsychotics prevent them from working properly and subsequently cause increased cell death because presumably the cell processes can not be sustained.

Forced drugging is truly a crime.

There is a wide range of atypical antipsychotics. Some are worse than others. They do not understand how most work. It's scary how little they know about many drugs that are prescribed.

Mark, you are wrong on this. To say PCS is a small part of his problems seems ludicrous to someone that knows firsthand the nightmare this can impact on one's lifes.

I've been told ever since my accident that i was worrying too much and just depressed. All my test came back normal. After going to hundreds of Doctors appt and family thought I was nuts for doing research every day for 3 years; I found an endocronologist to run a STIM test that showed Growth Hormone deficiency.

The professionals are garbage when it comes to TBI and what the latest research shows as viable treatments.