Hi, this disease is so confusing. Right now I am trying to enjoy and appreciate each day with her. She had a short second episode 2 months later and came out of it on her own but that’s when we started her on meds. What I’ve been told is the second episode could be something called “kindling”(her brain being more easily triggered) or this could be the prodrome. At this point she is considered to be on the schizophrenic spectrum probably schizophreniform Schizophreniform Disorder: What Is It, Symptoms & Treatment - 20-30% of people will be fine after a year of treatment with no episodes and 70 - 80% will get a diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar, etc.
I don’t think she had any drugs in her system, doctors ran some tests… but who knows…
How long was your son episode free? Did he stop meds with a dr’s supervision? There is a lot of new material about tapering off slowly which makes sense to me. Also seems to be a trend to maintain on much lower doses which is really helpful because of the side effects of these meds. Also been reading about dopamine sensitivity… Sounds like your son is doing really well, back in college and working. This what i hope for…
Re: genetic testing Because I have a relative who works for one of these companies we got a very reduced price and ran a full genome analysis. The 2 most useful pieces of information for this purpose were the information on how she metabolizes medication - there are 4 pathways and she is a poor metabolizer on the one that the AP meds utilize so she is taking a much smaller dose. There is another thread that was started about 10 days ago where the company GeneSight is mentioned Genetic testing for medication and says most insurance covers this.
The other test is for the MTHR gene mutation which shows if you can metabolize folic acid (my daughter is homozygous, gene mutation from both sides) so makes sense to supplement. I think i linked a prelim study where they were using 15mg of l-methylfolate and saw positive changes particularly in people who had this mutation. I asked her psych to prescribe the l-methylfolate in the 15mg dose - it is considered a medical food (not covered by insurance & expensive) There are a few vitamin/supplement companies that sell the supplement in 7.5mg and 15mg doses.
There is also quite a bit of evidence of l-methlyfolate also helping with depression, if you google you will get quite a bit of info
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