Dude sometimes we still give thorazine. And tbh ime the 3rd gens don’t do shit for my typical patient. For context also though, I’m essentially providing ICU level care, so when you say the word “symptom control” it’s often referring to like, fists.
We had a Lady maxxed on Haldol BID one time and she managed to cheek for a week and eventually she just hauled off and rapid fire punched a nurse in the head three times. She legit thought a man was entering through her window every night on a beam of light to forcibly impregnate her and deliver the baby. She kept demanding to see the 50 babies she had up on L&D from the past few months. I’ve actually seen quite a few pregnancy delusions and they’re almost always completely wild psychosis. Another was such an angry manic but high insight enough that when she couldn’t take it anymore she would just come scream at me for the thorazine.
I’m unsure if you don’t work inpatient psychiatry or you just work somewhere significantly classier than I do. I do work in an inner city area that’s flush with people stuck in a cycle of drugs / homelessness so I’m also not going to tell you that any of this is the best solution, just that it’s the only one avaliable to any of us right now due to shitty government policies.
Well obvs. It’s basically,“idk which receptor is making them _____ (punch people, refuse to eat or drink, or whatever other immediate harm to themselves / others), but we need it to stop 3 days ago and can figure out the details or a potential cross-taper to something better later.”
Color me fascinated, lol. My guesses are personal experience / reading up on your own treatment or that of a loved one, tangential relation to the field such as clinical research, or just plain personal fascination. Given you linked to a drug that appears to be in trials my first guess is actually the second one. Hadn’t heard of it, and I’m hopeful, but after seeing abilify get approved for acute agitation I’m… skeptical.
Yeah a lot of people don’t realize the damage is additive, both people w/ these disorders and unrelated laypeople who think “talented artist stops taking their meds and continues to be talented but starts creating art with weirder subject matter as their brain boils” is a cool story.
I’m mostly replying to add though that risperdal also has the distinction of being avaliable as a long-acting injectable, and if you’re trialing oral meds before committing to an LAI, your options are somewhat narrowed. Zyprexa does have an LAI available, but I’ve actually never seen it used and while I can’t tell you why for certain, I do have a guess.
If you have a patient sick enough that you’re considering an LAI, you don’t want to take benzos off the table for an entire month, especially if it turns out to be inadequate after discharge and they wind up in an ED agitated and unable to report their own med hx and get B52ed and stop breathing. I’ve had a pharmacist tell me considering that interaction is going out of style but a history of that kind of adverse event is difficult for a med to shake. Accutane still has suicidal ideation in adolescents listed as a side effect but I have a strong suspicion that it’s less causation and more correlation with the impact of pizza face on the self and social esteem of a teenager.