"We don't know why it works, it just does", one phrase a psychiatrist said to me in 1999: never talked about damage to come, weight gain: Depakote

Many mental health patients are told to take their medications with blind trust because "we don't know why they work, they just do". This was told to me in 1999 when my daughter had a psychotic reaction to a bed wetting pill--unknown to me then it was an antidepressant. The doctor who was her inpatient psychiatrist called me at home to tell me he had switched the antipsychotic Risperdal to Zyprexa and added Depakote.

Now that I know what I do, and have been down the road with my daughter over a decade to witness body damage from all of those drugs, a tragic loss of her cognitive ability and quality of life--those drugs are gone, as with the original and "popular" diagnosis of the day--Peditric Bipolar Disorder.

The doctor prescribed those drugs to an 11 year old, no informed consent to her or her family. She gained weight, (over 100 lbs)her body and her life changed. Forever.

Other kids in school on Depakote recognized each other sadly, calling their stomachs large from the "Depakote Bloat".

Her blood work always had a liver function test from that drug and after 4 solid years of taking 1500 mg of Abbott's Depakote a day, she was left with permanent damage of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

I still read other blogs and places where patients own that phrase, "don't know why it works, it just does", and wonder if they ever ask themselves to seriously stop and consider that phrase. Because, they do constant medication changes in quest of feeling better, and hang onto that phrase as almost a justification for trying something new. It's a flimsy excuse for promoting medications by doctors, not evidence-based and sheer quackery to say it.

Good luck with the "don't know why it works" game, I hope people don't end up disabled as a result of that dangerous paradigm.

Drug rep blows the whistle on ABBOTT for illegal marketing of the epilepsy drug Depakote for off-label use.

Giving my then 11 year old Depakote for a wrong diagnosis was off-label use. It was also the popular drug combo in teens back then to have "one mood-stabilzer, Depakote", one antipsychotic, Zyprexa, and one antidepressant, Zoloft". PLUS a PRN that was typically Ativan.