Risperidone for anxiety

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Do you know the dosage? 0.25 mg is the smallest dose manufactured. I know I haven't experienced any change in appetite from it, although I admit I'm also on ADHD meds, which would counter that. I've not felt slower of thought, nor has anyone commented on it.

Not saying these people don't have all the above, but it could be related to dosage or other issues.

I'm a pharmacologist-in-training

Risperidone should be tapered prior to withdrawal, BUT this does not apply to very low doses such as 0.5mg. Even when I was on 8mg, my taper to stopping didn't take an excessively long time, although I transferred to a different antipsychotic in the process.....

Extrapyramidal side-effects are more common with Risperidone than most other serotonin-dopamine antagonist (atypical/second-generation) antipsychotics, because it is closer to a typical D2 blocker antipsychotic than the others. I would assume that Risperidone's more typical antipsychotic presentation would lead to cognitive side-effects.

I only take it when I have a hard life situation. It helps me stress less

I've taken it in the past and hated it. It's an anti-psychotic and has a very strong effect on the brain. Your muscles feel tight and your thought processes are cut off and it makes you feel exceedingly tired. I've also still got a tarditive diskinesia side effect and I took it for less than a year.

If you want drugs, try smoking pot, unless like me, you are allergic. As for SSRIs--they are anathema for me. I was able to wean off Paxil only after it gave me a major panic attack and my therapist didn't seem alarmed, so I Googled "Paxil sucks" and found a forum to help me.

My advice: Google "risperidone sucks" or some other negative term to help you access people who have experience with it.

I am extreeeeeeemely dubious about NTs prescribing meds for ASDers. Just like I shouldn't have asked a male doctor if giving birth hurt--Doh!

I think anti-depressants can be of use for people with an ASD as they prevent the person getting too depressed and improve confidence but anti-psychotics are far more dangerous and have a far more damaging effect on the brain in my opinion and should be avoided if possible.

This is what the ASD author Wendy Lawson has to say about antipsychotics which are also called neuroleptics:-

http://www.mugsy.org/wendy/meds.htm

My brother is on it for autism, and he hasn't had good results. It makes him physically and mentally slow and it really hasn't decreased his meltdowns or irritability. Plus he has gone from a healthy weight to morbidly obese (our GP's word, not mine). The kicker is that before he started on it, his verbal communication skills were good enough that he could talk about how medications made him feel, but right after beginning it, they started steadily decreasing, along with his performance in school.

Didn't work for me. Was on it for months. Gave me headaches. That's it.

well, I've only been taking it for 5 days and although my anxiety has decreased slightly, my head feels more wierd and spaced out all the time, increased appetite but at the same time feeling sick, pain everywhere and feeling like my insides are shaking.

Wish I could avoid meds altogether.

I felt it gave me a false sense of security ie it took away my anxiety but to the extent that it made me reckless. I laughed at some thuggish-looking hoodies and they blocked my path then threw a lit firework at me - no way would I have been relaxed enough to laugh at them if not on the anti psychotics so in my opinion they put my life in danger by making me less cautious.

It's better to try and face situations that cause anxiety and adapt to them. Anti-depressants are a better medication to use but you still have to expose yourself to anxiety-provoking situations to learn coping skills.

I used to be on risperidone for about a year or so and sertraline hydrochloride for two years. Risperidone made extremely tired and lethargic, it gave me motor neuron ticks and made me gain weight, lost 14kg just by taking myself off it. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and social anxiety, but after two years of being on two medications I had enough so I just got the boxes of medication and my prescriptions and chucked the in the rubbish. I had trouble at first, but learned to deal with it. Since that day of deciding I had it with medication, I have never looked back.

I have to ask--why is he still on it? It doesn't seem to benefit him at all.

I've been on it since August, 2012. It seems to have caused anxiety and depression for me. At least I wasn't depressed before I started taking it, but I became depressed and much more anxious after starting it. These symptoms became worse after increasing my dose from 0.5 mg to 1 mg per day. They also became worse the longer I was on 1 mg per day.

Two weeks after the increase to 1 mg per day, my doctor switched me from 20 mg of Escitalopram to 20 mg of Fluoxetine. I'm sure that that change didn't help matters, but I still suspect the Risperidone as the main culprit.

In addition to the anxiety and depression, I have the shakes. Usually they're subtle and centered in my belly, but I've had four or five episodes since mid-December where my jaw shakes making my teeth rattle. In some of these episodes the shaking has extended further into my arms and chest. The doctor's I told about it don't seem to worry about it. It seems that they're looking for shaking that mimics Parkinson's Disease.

I also have a lot of sweats and some chills. My sleep pattern has been disrupted. I'm waking around 5 or 5:30 AM almost every day, unable to get out of bed, and just lying there and worrying. I hadn't thought about lethargy, but my motivation is really bad.

The mornings are hellish with anxiety. Some days I get some relief from the anxiety and the depression in the evening. The rest of the time, I barely function as an adult, lots of just sitting and waiting. Sometimes I can rouse myself to walk, but sometimes it's just too rough.

I started reducing my dose Christmas week. Right now I'm back down to 0.5 mg per day. If this week goes okay, I'll drop to 0.4 mg per day on Friday. My most recent doctor seriously recommends a graduated taper with at least a two week interval between drops.

I'm still very depressed and anxious most all of the time. However I did have two good days last week, the first good days I can remember in months. The last three days have been particularly bad, really serious depression, worse than usual which is already pretty bad.

I've taken Risperidone in the past and would say try and avoid any anti-psychotic like the plague!

It will tighten your muscles and cause shakes and jerky movements as it works on the dopamine pathways in the brain which also control muscle movements. Anti-psychotics reduce the amount of dopamine in the brain.

I felt depressed when I was on Risperidone and they switched me to Seroquel but this made me feel very drugged up and out of it
and I had bad feelings of anger on it so stopped taking it. They were the worst drugs I've ever taken for side effects.

Anti-psychotics are heavy duty drugs - they mess with your brain majorly and should be avoided full stop in my opinion.

You will always feel worse when you start an anti-depressant but after 2-3 weeks you should start feeling better. So I'd come off the Risperidone, under the guidance of your Dr and stay on the anti-depressant as in my opinion you don't need both.

Read what the author Wendy Lawson says about anti-psychotics (also termed neuroleptics):-

http://mugsy.org/wendy/meds.htm

I've been on 2mg per day for a couple of weeks now. So far no bad side effects and it seems to be having some positive effect on my ability to cope with life (I've been self-harming less and able to cope with a little more social stuff than previously). I've been on amisulpride before which was good too. The only side effects im having are on my energy levels/sleep patterns. I take 200mg trazodone as an antidepressant and it has also been successful in providing me with good quality, regular sleep - however I notice since I've been taking risperidone (I take 1mg at night, 1mg in the morning) I am waking more often in the night again. But I'm still sleeping better than without the trazodone. And conversely the morning dose seems to have the opposite effect to the night time dose and can make me very tired for a couple of hours mid morning.