Case 3: Selected Treatment
Christoph U. Correll, MD, professor of psychiatry at The Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and professor and chair of the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at Charité University Medicine in Berlin, Germany, discusses the selected treatment for the third case.
Editor’s note: The following is an automatically generated transcript of the above video.
"Since the patient dislikes taking more powerful medications that can cause side effects, since she's in remission of depression, the treatment selection includes here that aripiprazole is first reduced from 7.5 to 5 mg, and then two weeks later stopped.
Aripiprazole has a three-day half life, so it washes out slowly from 5 mg to zero. At the same time, when the decision is made to reduce aripiprazole, vitamin E 400 IU are started. It's simple, doesn't have any side effects, but has a potential to aid the recovery from tardive dyskinesia, especially when picked up early, and when maybe the antipsychotic is not needed anymore. It's 400 for four, then after four weeks it's increased to 800.
The patient's depression remains stable on fluoxetine only, which the patient did not dare stopping though for fear of worsening. She had her second severe depressive episode and was finally so happy that she was functional again. Over the next months, the patient and her daughter notice improvement in her TD symptoms, which is much appreciated by everyone involved."