schizoaffective bipolar disorder with rapid cycling anyone else?

[shay69]

5 mg's ambilify
by shay69, 18 minutes ago
4 days it worked great then back in manic state. just started meds and got diagnosed last Thursday. Im just wondering others personal experiences with meds and how long it took to get stable especially anyone who is rapid cycling and more manic than depressive or cycle at one time  and have psychotic features all of the above. From my understanding  I was diagnosed the worst form of bipolar and rapid cycling which is the hardest to treat . Thanks for any feed back and im curious to know if anyone else is in the same category as me to be specific schizoaffective bipolar disorder with rapid cycling Thanks all and any who have any input in advance

[so_so_so_so]

Think of it this way: what would you do if there were no meds available?

Lately I've been in a mixed mood psychotic state for several weeks, even with 300 mg Abilify Maintena, 15 mg Abilify Oral, and 50 mg of Lamictal.  

Said Lamictal has yet to reach it's highest dose (one must be put on slowly in order to lessen the risk of a potentially fatal body rash).

So, what I do is: put my intellect between my emotions and body, thus controlling behavior (people can't tell what you are feeling if you are detached).  Try some Buddhist or Stoic philosophy.

[paranoid_cataclysm]

I only share basically half of your diagnosis but I am on Abilify currently for psychosis.  It works better than Geodon did in different ways but worse in others but I like it better than Geodon worked for me.  Namely Abilify has treated my paranoia and inability to express myself which Geodon never touched which ruined my quality of life significantly but it is not working as great for my hallucinations and things like that.  I only got to try Risperdal briefly but it seemed like it was going to work the best out of them all unfortunately, unfortunate because I couldn't stand the side effects.  Of course medicines will work differently for you than they did for me and anyone else.  My mood was unstable but not enough to be diagnosed with a mood disorder as well apparently but Geodon seemed to fix this almost immediately.  I don't know how Abilify would of worked for my mood because I figured out how to stop the mood instability on my own with my mind while I was unstable and haven't experienced mood issues since for several months now which my psychiatrist seemed noticeably impressed with.  My mood when it first started going out of whack used to change in mere seconds to random emotions for no reason.  As for stability?  I don't know if I reached that entirely yet, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being fully recovered, me and my therapist agreed I am at about 5 in general.

[shay69]

u mean me?

[sodapop915]

ok get 2 the doc they must change those meds quickly 2 something else i need u here texting me please let me no a up date thanxs sodapop915

[ILADVOCATE]

I found Abilify to be activating and not quite that helpful but that's one person's experience. I did better on Risperdal and Seroquel (which do have more of a mood stabilization property, Zyprexa is noted for this as well but for myself it caused extreme weight gain and sedation, Abilify is less likely to cause weight gain and sedation of course). All this you would have to discuss with your psychiatrist. However I do know for myself and many people with schizoaffective disorder, a mood stabilizer in addition to an antipsychotic is needed (that includes for me now) and I found Lamictal to be the only mood stabilizer that was really effective on rapid cycling but as always each person's experience various though I believe the antipsychotic/mood stabilizer combination with schizoaffective disorder is generally what's effective as both work together to address different aspects of psychosis and mood stabilization.