madinamerica
J.A. Carter-Winward
Nov 18, 2018
[excerpt]
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/11/drug-induced-akathisia/I remember laughing at it when I first saw it in the local pain clinic in October of 2017. I’d gone in to get deep Botox injections in my neck — 24 of them — for my seized neck muscles, one of the many neurological conditions caused by psychiatric medications.
It was October 2017, and I’d been off the offending medication, Latuda, for over a year. Latuda is one of many “new generation†atypical antipsychotics that, once upon a time, were only given to the “severely mentally ill.†Atypical antipsychotics were FDA-approved for bipolar disorder, bipolar depression, treatment-resistant depression, and unipolar depression. They are also routinely prescribed by all manner of physicians to treat insomnia, postpartum depression, PTSD, and other mental and physiological disorders.
I pointed to the pain scale and said to my husband, “I wish ‘10’ and ‘bed rest required’ was my ‘worst possible pain.’†He agreed. I looked at the pain scale in the pain clinic with no small amount of anger and feelings of loss and betrayal because by that time, I’d been to see four doctors — three neurologists and one ER doctor — all of whom didn’t, and don’t, believe I was in pain when I came in to see them.
