Navigating Medication Management

Psychiatric medication has been both a blessing and a curse for me and is one of the many components that has helped me in my recovery. While finding the right medication(s) for me, I’ve felt both frustrated and hopeless at times.

I was initially hesitant to seek mental health treatment, even though my parents pushed me to get help.

I was initially hesitant to seek mental health treatment, even though my parents pushed me to get help. I began treatment amid the COVID-19 pandemic and thus, I receive telemedicine treatment. I initially started seeing a psychotherapist followed by a psychiatrist. I live with generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and unspecified psychosis.

My psychiatrist and I tackled anxiety with an antidepressant. The first antidepressant made me manic without a bipolar diagnosis. We moved on to trying antipsychotics to tackle the paranoid thoughts. While experimenting with a few antipsychotics, we increased the only antidepressant that somewhat worked, and then it stopped working.

While trying various medications, I attended psychotherapy with a licensed clinical social worker for over two years. My first therapist took care of my anxiety, but she did not specialize in obsessive compulsive disorder treatment. The OCD gold standard treatment is exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy. The first therapist allowed a smooth transition to the OCD specialist, who is a licensed professional counselor. I still receive psychotherapy by the licensed professional counselor. We continue to tackle my concerns, along with steadily preparing to do ERP therapy.

I became desperate to relieve my paranoid thoughts.

I became desperate to relieve my paranoid thoughts. I researched a highly underutilized antipsychotic medication that requires weekly, biweekly, and monthly blood draws to monitor for neutropenia, which is extremely low white blood count. Because of the risk of neutropenia, the medication belongs to the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) program, a drug safety program that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires for certain medications with serious safety concerns, to help ensure the benefits of the medication outweigh its risks. I initiated conversations about the medication with my psychiatrist, and she was hesitant for a long time. I reassured her that I did not mind the constant blood draws because I desired relief. The medication was the final resort due to the REMS program.

Patience and persistence were essential when trying to find a medication that worked for me.

While the REMS program has advantages and disadvantages, it can become a barrier to accessing treatment. It took several conversations with my psychiatrist to begin the treatment. Speaking up and advocating for myself has been one of the most important components of my journey. The FDA recently eliminated the medication’s REMS status, removing barriers to treatment and allowing access to patients, but there are other medications that still belong to the program.

Patience and persistence were essential when trying to find a medication that worked for me. I started the final resort antipsychotic medication with high hopes. The medication slowly started to alleviate my psychosis.

While my psychiatrist and I were working on finding the right antipsychotic dosage, we experimented with a few antidepressants, but they did not work to relieve my anxiety. I am not on antidepressants now, as we focus on maintaining symptom control with only the antipsychotic medication.

While I do feel that psychotherapy and mental health medication stigma still remain, I believe that connecting with like-minded individuals, such as fellow mental health advocates, can help reduce that stigma. If we are comfortable sharing our stories to reduce stigma, we are able to have meaningful mental health conversations.

I am grateful to have access to mental health treatment. I sometimes wish I did not delay seeking treatment, since it has changed me for the better.

Livia Peterson is a writer, arts enthusiast, and mental health advocate residing in Wisconsin. She enjoys bonding with her family and friends.