Haloperidol, benztropine, and buspirone for the anxiety.
Buspirone is a good drug
Haldol is an ancient drug, it does work for some but there are newer drugs with a better side effects profile. God and haldol knocks you out. For some it’s the best answer, but it’s not a place to start in my opinion. Has she been on any other APs?
Haldol is like a chemical lobotomy
This is the only medication she has taken ever… although she has been suffering for more than two years and we only became aware of how bad it had been for her last summer…
We had been trying to get her help since then and it was in January that she became so bad that we had to take her to the hospital and she admitted herself into inpatient care. She responded well to the haldol, but it can make her drowsy. She started at 10 mg. At this point they said she could split the pill and take a smaller dose… it has been good with quieting the voices.
Does she see a psychiatrist and how often? I’m no Dr and I know more about adult sz then adolescent sz, but old try to get her on invega instead or rexuli, basically a new drug. I’ve taken haldol, seems hospitals like to give it out because it makes you subdued
This month was the first time that she has seen the outpatient psychiatrist… At first they weren’t going to adjust her medication but said she could split the pills. She takes the haldol at night about an hour before going to bed
The side effects of these meds can be as bad as the illness… Hence so many people stop taking pills cause of the side effects. Flat effect is a criticism I read recently
If she chooses not to take her meds, she cannot drive my car. If she gets arrested, I will not bail her out. If she destroys my property, she must pay to have it repaired or replaced. Etc.
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If you can try to get weekly visits to the psych… seriously, they want to push you off 3 months maybe 1 month. Get a psych that does therapy and psychiatry and see you daughter for an hour. It makes a huge difference
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I think you should bail her out. At the end of the day she is damaged and only negative things come from being in prison
Complicating the issue is the fact that haldol is hard to get due to shortages… and that we were refused financial assistance from the hospital… this means we may need to try to get outpatient care from another medical facility where we do get financial assistance. But there is a waiting list for this facility for several months… the hospital that rejected us for financial assistance is the only one that provides inpatient care in our area…
Where do you live, country
I live in upstate NY… mostly rural area… between Binghamton (1 hour away) and Syracuse (1 1/2 hours away)
Do you have private insurance? My family is from upstate ny… buffalo
We have insurance through my work… but even then… psychiatric care is not cheap… especially inpatient care… and it is not easy to get in with a psychiatrist… the only way we were able to get my daughter any help at all was to take her to the hospital…and continue with the outpatient care from the hospital.
Can you look up psychiatrists in your area or those recommended by the hospital? And call them?
That have experience with SZ (very important)
We started doing that before she had to go to the hospital and most of them had long waiting list, not taking adolescents or any new patients at all. We started her out with a therapist in the summer after she told us about what she had been suffering with the past two years. The therapist suggested we talk to her primary doctor to do a MRI to rule out physical causes for the voices. Then the doctor suggested us to contact a psychiatrist…
All of this started when she was 17… and in January she turned 18…
One week later after her birthday, she was admitted into the hospital.
In Syracuse, there are much more psychiatrists than there are in Binghamton…but the distance is a big issue… one of my daughter’s big issues is chronophobia where the passage of time gives her big time anxiety…the big feeling of time wasted and not doing something productive.
It is rural out there. I was in Manhattan, drs were easy to find but good ones quite hard. Is there anything as a Psych that will talk over Skype and call in scrips?
I recommend your daughter get active in the sz side of this forum. There are a number of teen sz members and it can be better than therapy
That is a very good question and may be worth checking into…
Wondering how my insurance would cover something like that.