I was not commenting about the number of days,weeks or months that they have been together but the fact that they have reached the depth of committment whereby they have planned to marry in August.
A decision to marry is not in most peoples eyes a light decision,it means that they are theoretically well past the will we/wont we stage.
A stage that whether or not it is arrived at after months years, decades or only days is late in the game in many if not most peoples eyes.
Oh! Yeah, somehow, I missed that part. Never mind!
What is a circumstantial mental trauma?
Yes, Risperidone is used for many other things besides psychotic disorders. Look to your knowledge of your boyfriend, not some idea of what mental illness is like. Is he kind, willing to grow and change with you, you have tons in common, and you love each other? Then maybe it doesn’t matter what types of pills he takes or what health problems he has.
If your guy has got a trauma history, he might have PTSD, and risperidone (along with other antipsychotics) are definitely used for this mental condition. (anecdotal, I am not a Psychiatrist, but I am a social worker and worked in the mental health field for several years) Some people I know with the condition are prescribed an antipsychotic as a powerful sleep aid. This class of meds can help someone relax and sleep when their anxiety is too severe for regular sleep aids to work.
Also, a lot of different medications are used “off label” by doctors to treat conditions which the meds are not usually for. Doctors who are versed in the current literature often know alternative uses for different meds before these uses become standard for the drug. It’s best not to get hung up on the “standard” uses for different meds…as a lay person’s understandings of a drug’s purposes doesn’t take this into account.
The one thing that we, here on the Dope, and from what you’re saying, you, don’t know is enough about his illness to be able to predict his future, and therefore your future with him. With some mental illnesses, you can be reasonably certain that they are stable. I speak from experience: I have depression. My illness doesn’t change and I am the same from day to day.
Would it be worth asking *him *how he feels his illness may affect your futures. In your OP, you describe his trauma as being quite major. Does he know if he is now recovering from that trauma, or if that trauma is ongoing? Does he feel that he may be involving you in a difficult situation? I appreciate that this conversation is not an easy one, but it may be helpful.
There is nothing worse than a stranger telling you what you’re thinking or feeling, but as with some other posters, I do wonder if your indecision is a strong indicator that perhaps waiting a while might be an idea. In my experience, true love is a love with no reservations. It’s not unknown for couples to get married because of the trauma that is to come; as a sign of their commitment. I’m not suggesting that you should be like that; I don’t think I could. But does it illustrate that your love might be conditional?
I have been married for over twenty years. I am not the person Mrs Nine married. I know she finds me very difficult, and heavens knows where she finds the tolerance and resilience to put up with me. I don’t know if she would have married me had she known what I would turn out like. I’ve never asked her. But I do sympathise with your dilemma.
Whatever the outcome, I hope it turns out well for both of you.
I do not have psychosis but I took Risperidone at one point to treat trauma-related flashbacks and anxiety. Just because your boyfriend is taking an anti-psychotic does not mean he is mentally ill. PTSD has a lot of symptoms, such as flashbacks and nightmares, that don’t respond to traditional psychotropic meds such as antidepressants. If you love him as you say, I’m not sure why you would draw the line at mental illness. Crazy people can have successful loving relationships, you know.
If you’ve known him a long time and he has been loving and good to you, and he exhibits an attitude of willingness to confront his mental health issues, I don’t see why this would be a deal-breaker. Would you feel the same way if he possibly had cancer? I’m just sayin.’ Love is about facing the rough stuff together, whether it’s death, a stressful job change, or an attack of the crazies.
ETA: Drum God beat me to it.
But it does depend on what sort of crazy. Wild outbursts interspersed with normality is one thing. Permanent character altering illnesses like depression is another. Though if it can be controlled with medication, there shouldn’t be a problem. But I agree: if it’s *true *love, nothing else matters. I guess that a lot of people never find true love, and are happy with the closest they can get to it. At that level, there might be conditions.
Um, no. This idea is even worse. Some medications for mental illness can cause withdrawal symptoms that are absolutely hideous.
Not to mention-why should he do this? Just so she can “see what he’s like without them?”
:dubious:
Let me put it this way. I have an uncle with schizoaffective disorder. He is a loving person, but he is batshit insane. He is prone to violent outbursts, has paranoid delusions and auditory and visual hallucinations, and is highly resistant to treatment (both attudinally and medically speaking.) I could understand why this would be a tough row to hoe, and having seen the ambiguous way his own family approaches his illness, I can definitely see how this is not a guy who could sustain a loving marriage.
But my uncle is not by any means the face of ‘‘typical’’ mental illness. He is the extreme. I am a lesser extreme… I have PTSD and associated major depressive disorder/generalized anxiety disorder. At my worst, I was a sad, sick little bump on a log who could barely get out of bed, but luckily for me I had a supportive partner willing to stick by me, to continue to love me despite my illness. He dragged me out of bed and forced me to eat and did whatever he had to in order to show me how to love myself. I spent several very miserable years doing everything within my power to get better–therapy, meds, whatever it took. And finally, after feeling like I was hitting a brick wall, the skies broke open. I found my way to the other side and while I still suffer chronic depression and anxiety, I am far from the nonfunctional shell of a human being I once was. I am now living without meds and consider myself highly functional and generally very happy. While I attribute my success to my hard work, I also attribute it to my husband for being an emotional warrior all those years. As I said on our wedding day, ‘‘Since you loved me at my very worst, I vow to give you my very best.’’ And I have–we are as close to marital bliss as you can get.
Throughout ALL of this, I was, and continue to be, a very loving partner. I have never abused my husband or mistreated him. I may have doubted it, but he never doubted for a second that being with me was worth the hassle. He never doubted or regretted for a second, because he felt my sustaining love all those years. I could not blame someone for leaving a situation in which their mentally ill partner was abusive, parasitic, resistant to change, or in denial about their condition. I’m just saying, you can’t make generalizations about these things. There is no one true face of mental illness. It all depends on the person and the relationship.
This is only a good idea if you want to substantially increase the risk of suicide or other self-destructive acts. Many people mistakenly think, ‘‘Well I’m just on them for low-grade depression, what harm could it do?’’ It can do a lot of harm. My hardest years were the ones where I was medicated but had a tendency to stop taking meds for a few days. This resulted in everything from a psychiatric inpatient hospital stay to really feeling like I was becoming psychotic. I went from having no history of suicidal ideation to very nearly doing it several times. My doctors universally agreed this was caused by the withdrawal from suddenly stopping the meds. Years after, when I finally made the mutual decision with my doctor to stop taking my medication, it took a full six months to gradually decrease the dosage at a safe enough rate to avoid the risks of withdrawal. Six months. You can’t mess around with this stuff.
Your post resonates strongly with me. I have read of others who have been brought out of the their depression by loved ones. I, too, have done everything I and the medical services can dream up; I’ve taken every anti depressant known to man, I’ve had various therapies, and I’ve tried things like exercise, but when they don’t produce the desired results, they all shake their heads, and say ‘You’re a tough nut to crack’. Sadly for my wife, I have been told by professionals, on several occasions that I am incurable and by one that I’m not incurable but ‘treatment resistant’. (Hah!) Despite her best efforts, I can’t get my head above the clouds. So, I’m really pleased for you, but not everyone can get to where you are. But she has never given me any doubts as to her love for me. I’m just amazed she’s still willing to put up with me.
About your last paragraph. I am, as I indicated above, resistant to change. As you know if you have had depression, ‘resistant to change’ is almost a definition of depression. I also don’t have the strength of emotion or feelings to be as supportive of my wife as she deserves or you have been of your partner. So I am both pleased for you, and envious of your strength.
(I apologise to the OP for the hijack).
There is unfortunately a stigma attached to people that have sought psychological help that I believe is the cause of the OP’s anxiety. Thought processes, such as that which davekhps expressed are in some ways rational, yet quite wrong. As was subsequently pointed out, physical ailments such as diabetes are equally able to effect a relationship. In fact, they are very likely to effect the psychology of the individual despite the fact that the individual has normal psychology.
The problem is that the OP and many others see the major tranquilizer, then believe that there is some increasing probability of the person becoming abusive, psychotic, halucinatory or just generally intolerably crazy than anyone else. Actually, I would suggest that the rational way in which the OP’s betrothed (she didn’t explicitly say engaged so I don’t use fiance) has behaved indicates a very strong psychological fortitude. I would put considerably more emotional trust in the likes of him versus people with simialr beliefs to davekhps, because they are much more likely to acknowledge a psychological treatment is appropriate, than refuse treatment in order to avoid being painted by the very brush that they have allways painted everyone else with. (I don’t mean to pick on you davekhps, I don’t know you. I am only using the opinions you expressed in post #16 to derive an example.)
I don’t like to give personal information about me or anyone I know out, but this person is sufficiently distanced from me that I don’t think it is a problem. Many years ago, I knew a girl in graduate school that took Risperidone daily. Graduate school is the sort of thing that can drive anyone over the edge a little bit. In fact, I would say that the brighter they were, the more likely they had affective issues. From her description to me, all it did was take the edge off of her panic enough to prevent it from going into an emotional spiral that snowballs out of control. Last I heard, she was doing a postdoc at Los Alamos laboratories. I can assure you that if there were any question about her psychological stability, she would not have recieved a postdoc at a major institution working with extremely hazardous chemicals.
My non-medical conclusion is that your boyfreinds taking resperidone is hardly an indication of anything. His willingness to tell you about it and acknowledge his issues are an indication of extreme trust in you and extreme beleif in his own ability to deal with himself. IMHO, he has a lower probability of becoming mentaly unstable than the average person.
I just wanted to clarify that in this case by ‘‘resistant to change’’ I mean ‘‘refusal to try.’’ It is frustrating to keep going when nothing seems to work – it took 6 years before I began to see meaningful progress myself. I think if you are living with someone who outright refuses to treat the problem, that is grounds for reconsidering the commitment. In your case, you have been trying, and though you might get frustrated and give up, you continue to try–isn’t that all anyone can really ask? It’s not your fault if you still suffer.
Though I will say that a huge part of me breaking through that barrier had to do with acknowledging that depression may always be a part of my life. I spent several hours today quite depressed, in fact, and the last two weeks have been particularly rough as for the first time in a couple of years I felt that I truly wanted to die. I even got in a snit with my husband today because he was frustrated with my apathy–I didn’t mean to imply it’s all perfect now, or that I’m some perfectly loving ideal wife.
But part of feeling at peace with my depression is accepting that it’s going to be there, and eventually it will go away, and then come back again, and that’s just the hand I’ve been dealt. I’ve just found that the defining moment for me is when I can think, ‘‘Oh, this is just depression,’’ and not panic. It’s when I start resisting and resenting the feeling of depression that I get even more depressed and start blaming myself and feeling guilty. A book I found very helpful, that very gently illustrates this point, is Cheri Huber’s The Depression Book.
I’m only offering this idea if it’s helpful to you–not to try to make you feel worse for being as miserable as you are. It’s just that for me, acceptance was a huge part of breaking through. Good luck.
No. Mind-altering drugs affect different people different ways and it’s not uncommon for someone to try several different things before they find what works for them (assuming they have a doctor and health insurance interested in that sort of thing).
The side-effects with first generation antipsychotics were common and bad enough that “off-label” use was rare. The second generation stuff hasn’t been around long enough to know what sort of risks they present with extended use, but appear to be considerably safer. Risperidone, notably, is approved for use in pre-adolescents, so it’s probably not something to get too worried about.
Oh, good heavens, I get it, already. I see now that the drug is indiated for all sorts of things.
He is definitely a wonderful man who is willing to talk about things and with whom I can be totally honest and ommunicative. I over reated because of what the web site that I went to said about the drug’s main applications.
Over-analysis can be fun.
I think you may have a problem with your ‘c’ key. 
Your reaction was similar to mine when my OB prescribed Prozac after I had my first baby. Prozac? PROZAC? I thought that was for crazy people! After the initial shock wore off, I filled the prescription (I also live in the land where antidepressants are handed out like candy) and I was weaned off it in 3 months.
I don’t think you need to worry about him developing a tolerance either. He may not need it long term for one thing. And since he’s on the minumum dose, he can increase it. And if he does get to the maximum dose and it stops working for him, there are a million other substitutes out there.