Tardive Dsykenesia Question

[ZacharyOdette]

I know you can potentially get Tardive Dyskenesia from antipsychotic medications but people rarely do from the atypicals, right? My question is how long do you have to be taking these medications to potentially develop tardive dyskenesia? Like 15 years? Because I just watched a video on schizophrenia that talked about the typicals causing tardive dyskenesia in some instances but the people who developed it were taking the meds for a long period of time. Maybe my 15 years suggestion is really stupid but does anyone have any idea?

[Velvet Elvis]

IIRC, the average risk is somthing like 5% per year with typicals. Factors like age and gender can make a difference but I'm not sure how. With most of the atypcials the risk is supposed to be what? 90% less 95% less? I don't remember. I just got up to pee and didn't mean to check in here before going back to bed. I'm not awake enough to look it up right now. If you're on zyprexa you're more likely to eat yourself to death than get TD though.

[ncc1701]

Heya ZacharyOdette,

I have a reference about this somewhere.

I'm quite sure I posted that a while back but I can't find it in here anywhere and I gave up looking

At any rate, from what I can recall.

TD and EPS are not as infrequent as we used to think with atypicals.

Still less frequent than with typicals.

I'll look it up when I get home on the weekend, sorry about the lame info hon.

--ncc--

[LikeMinded]

hey y'all, jumping on the soapbox here.

Developing TD (and akathisia, for that matter) is sharply dependent on your personal neurophysiology and neurochemistry, as well as comorbid NI/MI.

Atypicals are very well known to occasionally cause TD, or at the very least, EPS (sort of a Diet TD ). I don't think neuroleptic malignant syndrome has been seen too often with these. They can also cause akathisia (ranging from mild anxiety and semi-voluntary physical hyperkinesia to full-blown, intractable impatience where one second feels like one year). Severe akathisia has been described as worse than the blackest depression or the most psychotic breakdown. I should know (lurid details below). Those on AAPs, especially Abilify, watch for it.

That said, the rates for these side effects are far, far, far lower in AAPs than the regular APs.

Zyprexa is the least likely of the AAPs to cause TD/EPS/akathisia. In fact, many people have had great success using it in low doses to alleviate those exact symptoms caused by another AAP!!

In 2004, shortly after I moved from Ohio to California, I was put on 10mg/day of it, as apparently my shrink didn't want to assume liability for me going full-on, destructive manic and having me or someone else sue her. That's my guess, at least.

Zyprexa sort of ruined things. After 3 weeks at 10mg, I developed moderate EPS (my hand would shake so badly that I couldn't get most of a spoonful of sugar into a coffee cup). EPS also interfered with my job at the time (which involved delicate assembly and time-controlled testing of small prototype devices). I was put on benztropine for that; and benztropine gave me horrendous double vision that also interfered with my job.

But that's not the kicker. I got the severe akathisia mentioned above. I mean REAL severe. One workday felt like 10 years. Weeks felt like millennia. It's hard to explain the feeling to anybody who hasn't had it before. I didn't know why this symptom was there; I thought I was going crazy with severe anxiety... I was prescribed Valium for it, and it didn't help the problem. Given that I felt I couldn't support myself, I had to move back home to Indiana.

And, the catatonic, black depression I slipped into after quitting Z (well-known withdrawal issue) was waaaay better than the akathisia. :-)

---herrfous, dopamine-deficient since 1983