skihorse I really don't know how effective the drugs were, tbh. I did carry on getting worse after I started taking them, but then who knows how bad I would have got without them? I can't remember the first one I was on (tbh I have very poor memories of a lot of things from the past two years, which are also the first two years of DDs life ), but that made me really sleepy and lethargic, and I absolutely piled on the weight, to the point where I was told to diet on medical advice (previously I had always been quite severely underweight). I eventually managed to persuade them to change me onto aripiprazloe (no idea how to spell that!) which was loads better and I felt like I had got my life back. I still had symptoms though, but like I say, I have no idea if they would have been worse without the drugs. I was also on sertraline, but again, I didn't see an improvement when I started them, so no idea if they were stopping me getting worse or what. If I missed a dose of either, I would feel weird for up to a week, so I don't think just taking them when symptoms started would work. The tranquillisers were just for emergencies, basically to knock me out so I couldn't do anything mad, like you say, although I did find it annoying that, when in hospital, the staff would insist on me taking the maximum dose at all times, even though I was very calm and well-behaved in general.
stake last time it started with what I thought was some kind of post traumatic stress from the birth, I would get flashbacks and nightmares, then it gradually spread to other areas of my life. I just thought I was tired, but when the mw did the pnd questionnaire, it was enough to make her make me go straight to the GP, within the hour. He put me on setraline, and then a CPN came to my house and had a chat, and she got alarmed and referred me to the early intervention team, who eventually put me on anti-psychotics. DD must have been about six months old by that point.
morningpaper DP is lovely, he really is brilliant about the whole thing. He can generally spot when I am going loopy and will tell me, he also has all the contacts for people to ring about me if need be, and I have signed all the forms so they will discuss my case with him if needed. Mind is a good idea, I will go and look them up now.
I dunno, I just think that the things that triggered the problems last time (traumatic birth, first baby so I didn't know what to expect, the sheer boredom of only having a newborn as company, having only just got together with DP, not eating properly, massive change of lifestyle, etc) shouldn't be there this time, so it seems a bit defeatist to go on the drugs without any symptoms. Then again, if I was at risk of a physical illness, I would take drugs to stop it, so why would a mental illness be different?
I am kind of reluctant to label myself as "mental" again as well. Although I suppose loads of people are on drugs like these and live completely normal lives, it doesn't mean that things will end up like last time again.
I'm pretty certain I will be able to spot if I start getting ill again.