quitting risperadol

[puddentane]

My adult 35 year old son has been taking this meds for over ten years and Monday just stopped taking it and refuses to take any more medicine or go to a psychiatrist.  I should mention that we just moved to a new state and do not have a doctors set up.  What should I do?  What should I look for in his behavior?  

[therese83]

Well I have been watching this and no one replied so I am going to give this a go.  

My father has schizophrenia.  In my childhood he tried this twice with horrific consequences.  He had to be taken away and locked up for 2 months both times.  It could take 6 - 8 weeks for your son to fully relapse, he may appear good at first.

It is normal to want to try living without medication and it is possible to recover in a few cases.  This should be trialed under Doctors supervision.

How are things now?

[therese83]

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/show/613994

See this post on the 'ask an expert' forum, on a similar theme

[ILADVOCATE]

Please ask your son why he went off Risperdal. Perhaps he couldn't tolerate the side effects. Abilify is often better tolerated than Risperdal. And as I've put in many posts, I am on glycine, a Phase II antipsychotic in FDA that is a glutamate antagonist, a new class of antipsychotics and my recovery is being documented by psychopharmocologist as "as good as any FDA approved antipsychotic or better". The longer he stays off Risperdal the more he will decompensate and become psychotic but perhaps the reason that made him go off it was that the side effects were intolerable or if he could not realized he needed it, then his reality testing was poor and perhaps it wasn't helping as much as it should. Find out what happenned and then you can contact me. There are newer and more innovative treatments that are more tolerable and effacacious and promote a fuller recovery.