Posted by med_empowered on December 2, 2005, at 13:39:29
In reply to Antipsychotic + low dose stimulant??, posted by temoigneur on November 30, 2005, at 23:11:16
I'm not quite sure what you're being treated for; I'm assuming schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, since your treatment seems to be based on antipsychotic medication. Anyway, using low-dose stimulants in schizophrenia is actually a pretty old practice. On the downside, there's a risk of inducing psyhosis in stable patients. On the upside, it can often significantly improve "negative symptoms" and problems like depression, lethargy, etc. that often don't respond to neuroleptics or actually become worse than before treatment. Provigil is probably the best medication for this indication; it can induce/worsen psychosis, but the risk is smaller than with older stimulants. Ritalin is also sometimes used. I imagine the amphetamines would be avoided in schizophrenia, but I could be wrong.
poster:med_empowered
thread:583994
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051126/msgs/584586.html