Lo prescribed with Abilify

Is your wife aware of her anxiety? Mine is but it's my fault of course. Meaning I'm not sure anxiety vs anger. I'm going to ask, our appt is tomorrow.

Here’s my understanding. Abilify and Rexulti are both antipsychotics with similarities. Rexulti is approved by the FDA for agitation associated with Alzheimer’s disease (but only because it went through testing that other antipsychotics haven’t). Since Abilify is a generic, it is much cheaper. About six months ago when my DH was very angry, verbally abusive, and threatening physical abuse, he was prescribed Rexulti. We used .5 mg for 2 weeks and 1.0 mg for 2 weeks, and I saw little change. Then we went to 2.0 mg, and he immediately became very weak. We went back to 1.0 mg. In the meantime, he became extremely weak and had several falls. He also had a UTI. We stopped Rexulti. After several weeks, he regained some strength and, thank goodness, has not been angry or abusive for the past four months. I remember years ago when my mother had AD and was prescribed Zyprexa, an antipsychotic. She became so weak that she could not even sit up. The AL facility kept sending her to the hospital, and they couldn’t find a reason for her weakness. It wasn’t until the Zyprexa was stopped that she was able to regain strength over time and use her walker again. I know that these drugs may work well for some patients; however, be on the lookout for extreme weakness and reduce the dosage before stopping it completely.

My DW was on it for a little while. I didn't notice much impact. We went through a few meds during that time. We are now only on Seroquel and Venlafaxine which is working for DW. It may be a process to work through the different meds or combinations to see what works for your LO. It took a while for us.

For us it reduced DWs anxiety, agitation and anger. Which all three of those probably fed into each other.

Before we hit our med mix DW would constantly be walking, complaining, questioning, shadowing, rearranging everything, couldn't settle down, etc. Now she is a whole lot more settled. There are still bouts of the behaviors however they are for a short duration not days on end. We have also progressed some in our stages so it could be some of that also.