New treatment with Lamotrigine

[cyb3rbirdie]

Hello trauma community 🙏 my psychiatrist just prescribed me Lamotrigine (an AED)...it should help with mood swings. I will start with low doses, increasing over time and gradually substituting other drugs I'm taking right now (duloxetine, mirtazapine and pregabalin). I looked for scientific evidences about its use for ptsd but couldn't find very much. Does anyone know something about this drug? Have you ever tried it?

 

[Sideways]

I tried it. It didn't help me personally, but I understand that it can be very helpful for some people with mood disorders.

 

[whiteraven]

I took it for seizures, which is its primary use. It had absolutely no effect on my depression, but it is marked specifically for use in bipoar disorder, and I have major depressive disorder.

 

[joeylittle]

Lamictal....I did try that for awhile, when it was coming up as having potential use as adjunctive treatment for depression (or potentially monotherapy - I wasn't on it long enough to try that route.

It wasn't a more effective adjunct that the bupropion that was already working fairly well for me.

I looked for scientific evidences about its use for ptsd but couldn't find very much. Does anyone know something about this drug? Have you ever tried it?

If you've been prescribed it to help regulate mood swings, and those are connected to stress that is exacerbated by unprocessed trauma - that would be how it relates to PTSD.

I'd give you the advice I tend to always give.....start keeping a regular mood journal. Not something that you do a lot of deep thinking in - just somewhere that you can record your mood on some kind of scale that makes sense for you (subjective units of distress - S.U.D.S. - or anything similar). At a few regular points in the day, just check in with your mood - name it, give it a rating. Track your hours of sleep, and don't expect anything to become too apparent very quickly. Patterns will emerge over the four to eight weeks of initial titration, and that'll tell you whether it's helping, hurting, or value-neutral.

And the tracking becomes a good habit to have, in general. Helps with big-picture management of life stressors.

 

[cyb3rbirdie]

If you've been prescribed it to help regulate mood swings, and those are connected to stress that is exacerbated by unprocessed trauma - that would be how it relates to PTSD.

I'd give you the advice I tend to always give.....start keeping a regular mood journal. Not something that you do a lot of deep thinking in - just somewhere that you can record your mood on some kind of scale that makes sense for you (subjective units of distress - S.U.D.S. - or anything similar). At a few regular points in the day, just check in with your mood - name it, give it a rating. Track your hours of sleep, and don't expect anything to become too apparent very quickly. Patterns will emerge over the four to eight weeks of initial titration, and that'll tell you whether it's helping, hurting, or value-neutral.

Yes, I also think that this is the mechanism - now I am in a stressing period that triggers my past traumas, so mood swings became really hard to handle. Keeping a mood journal is a great idea, I'll absolutely try it! Thanks for the advice

 

[Friday]

Lamictal is used very broadly for eating disorders + bipolar, though it tends to cause sleepiness / mind fog for months, then sudden clarity & normalizing. IE it’s a total pain. in. the. ass. for anything with a mood disorder or mood component attached… but? Frequently beloved for decades. ESP by the ED community. Once one gets past the first few months, until the paradigm shifts.

 

[EveHarrington]

I had the bad skin side effect, so treatment didn’t get very far. I have heard of it working well for others as a mood stabilizer though.