Question about Bipolar Disorder and Medications

[scochran]

Hello, and thank you for reading this. I will get right to the point. I am a 44 year old Bipolar I, and was diagnosed back in September, 2002. I probably have been Bipolar most of my life. I have been seeing my current Psychiatrist for a little over a year now, and at the time I first started seeing him, I was taking Abilify 30mg in the morning, and Seroquel 50mg at bedtime. He started me on Lithium, and my current dose is 1200mg at bedtime. We discontinued the Seroquel, and started a slow and progressive decrease in the Abilify, with the end goal of discontinuing it. The decrease has taken place over a period of about 8 months. I am currently taking 3mg. Back in the middle of July, I started noticing manic-type symptoms of decreased need for sleep, hypersexuality, agitation, irritability, wanting to spend money, coming up with big plans, racing thoughts, taking risks (like while driving), and no appetite. There hasn't been any psychosis. I have been hospitalized for mania twice, and this episode is starting out similar to those. I am wondering if I have reached my "threshold" with the Abilify, or could it possibly be unrelated to the reduction of the medication.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

[opus88]

Hi, I'm not BP but my son is, I would really talk to you're psych doctor, it really sounds to me like this is d/t the discontinuation of most likely seroquel...check with you're doc quickly b4 this gets out of hand...
Oh, I also wanted to mention MedHelp also has a very good forum for bipolar ....there are alot of posters there with really helpful advice.
I think on the forum page you would click on MENTAL HEALTH than you will find it from there.
good luck to you