Q: Depakote and Tazadone not helping
I am currently on Depakote 1500 daily plus trazadone to help me sleep
and the meds are not helping. I have been taking the meds for over a year. I
have also been on lithium and paxil with the same results. What would you
recommend. I am also prescribed the depakote for chronic megraines. I never
relax and I always seem to shake and be nervous.
Dear Sean --
If you have a diagnosis of "bipolar disorder", I would presume the
sleep problems and the shake/nervous/can't relax problems are coming from the
same place, namely that your bipolar disorder is still not fully controlled on
1500 of Depakote. That is unfortunately extremely common (the Harvard
group recently looked at their patient population and found that only about half
of their patients with bipolar disorder had full symptom control with only one
mood stabilizer). You might ask your doctor about slowly substituting
another mood stabilizer (low-dose, just enough to get full symptom control -- in
your case, no sleep problems or shake/nervous/can't relax problems) such as
lithium or one of the newer
ones.
Dr. Phelps
Published March, 2001
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