This post was inspired by a post a little while back by Mio at Mentally Ill in America. Managing medications can be a basic part of mental illness/chronic illness life. But doing it without a system may only work for so long, especially when brain fog gets in the way. At that point, it might …
Managing Psych Medications: Getting a Pill Dosette Read More »
The idea for this post came from Angela of I Am My Own Island, and others have also expressed interest in her suggestion. It’s taken me a while to pull this post together because there just isn’t a simple answer as to why psych medications stop working out of the blue sometimes. There are various …
Why Do Psych Medications Stop Working Sometimes? Read More »
If you take meds, or even if you haven’t, you may have heard of medication half-life. But what does it actually mean? The idea for this post came from Angela of I Am My Own Island. Pharmacokinetics Half-life has to do with pharmacokinetics, which refers to the way a drug moves through the body. There …
Medication Half-Life: What it Means and Why it Matters Read More »
Anyone can have nightmares, but up to 80% of people with PTSD experience nightmares as a symptom of their PTSD. The idea for this came from an article that SkinnyHobbit shared about the treatment of nightmares, which is based on recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine in 2018. What can worsen nightmares Some …
Medications That Can Help with Nightmares in PTSD Read More »
This post is based on an article that Skinny Hobbit shared with me. It was published last year in The Lancet Psychiatry and compared the potential for weight gain with different antipsychotics. The link between antipsychotics and weight gain To start, let’s talk about why antipsychotics can cause weight gain. There are multiple different neurotransmitter …
Antipsychotics and the Likelihood of Weight Gain Read More »
Have you ever wondered why antidepressant side effects seem to be worse at the beginning, or why it takes so long for them to actually start doing what you expect of them? There is actually some rhyme and reason for it, so let’s talk about it. Let’s talk serotonin People with depression don’t have enough …
Antidepressant Side Effects & Delayed Therapeutic Effect Read More »
There’s a lot of stigma around taking psych meds to treat mental illness. Meds certainly aren’t right for every person or every condition, but they’re a good tool to have available as part of the mental illness toolbox. For all the social kerfuffle over meds, they are just a tool. Getting well (or getting by) …
Taking Psych Meds: I’ll Tell You Mine if You Tell Me Yours Read More »
You can find all kinds of stories online of people reporting negative experiences with different forms of psychiatric medication. However, there’s inherent bias in that kind of reporting of side effects, so you really can’t use that information to effectively generalize how safe or effective a treatment is. In this post, we’ll look at where …
Bias in Online Stories of Psych Med Side Effects Read More »
But Deliver Me From Crazy by Katie R. Dale is a memoir of living with bipolar disorder. You may know Katie from her blog, and she also contributed a story about bipolar I to my book Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis. The book begins when Katie was in high school, when her illness first appears. …
For anyone who needs to take medications for a chronic condition like mental illness, dealing with side effects may end up being part of the reality of taking meds. The pros should always be outweighing the cons, but the right balance can be hard to find. No side effects is possible All medications have potential …
