My 23 year old son suffers from schizophrenia.
We finally found a med that helped him. He was taking the oral Invega daily. But they were not working. He started on the Invega injection monthly.
Doc suggests putting him on a higher dose 800mg every 3 months. He was having tardive dyskinesia so doc lowers his dose. Now he’s on 157mg monthly. He had his injection on March 23rd.
He becomes suicidal,paranoid,not sleeping… Bring him to mental health services they prescribe daily oral Invega 3mg along with Seroquil titrating half a pill nightly for five days, one pill five days, one half five days,… Etc.
The first day took him to ER(with the help from cops cuz he refused to go) Sat there for 6 hours. EKG and blood work taken. They send him home saying I need to give it more time for the med to work that they can’t do anything until he’s due for his injection and at that point doc will increase dose of Invega. I’m monitoring him like a hawk which makes him feel worse.
Its hard enough on him to live with this disease, I just wish there was some Natural,non life threatning supplement he could take that would help him! My heart just hurts for him so much!!
Hi July,
I’m going through something similar with my son right now & the Invega. It’s rough.
My son is in the hospital right now.
Hi slw,
It is very frustrating to say the least!
I’m sorry to hear your son is in the hospital!
I wanted to have my son admitted to a phcyciatric unit at least until we can get his meds squared. But mental health resisted against it because they said the docs might do more harm than good because they could prescribe something else.
Are they getting your son’s meds in order?
We meet with doc tomorrow. My son has a hard time taking the oral meds.
My son has been pretty much refusing oral meds for this past year.
He has no physical problem taking them - he just stubbornly refuses.
They’re giving him 1 mg Risperdal 3X day and he does seem slightly better today than yesterday - and I take all forward progress no matter how tiny it may be.
I don’t know if this will be the right combo or not. We’ll just have to see.
He went into the hospital this past Sunday night. He had his Invega injection the previous Wednesday (156 mg), but the previous one had given out completely on him.
He had only slept a total of under 16 hours in the previous 8 days when he went in. He’d stay up 2 to 3 days, sleep 2 to 4 hours, then be up again. He is at least sleeping now, so that’s something.
They TDO’d him because he was a danger to himself - not that he would purposely cause it, but that he couldn’t protect himself from harm. He had started wandering around, sometimes in the middle of the road, and was just out of it. It’s the 4th time in 7 months he’s been TDO’d for the same thing.
Here, the outpatient team does coordination of care with the inpatient team so that hopefully they don’t mix up the prescriptions like what you’re describing.