I’ve googled this and searched through reddit but nothing gives a clear explanation. Antipsychotics can apparently help stabilize your mood… essentially making them mood stabilizers? How are they different from actual mood stabilizers then? Are they just mood stabilizers that can help with extra things? If someone with a mood disorder has tried a lot of different mood stabilizers that don’t help effectively, what advantage could an antipsychotic have over those medications?
In: Biology
This is not going to be a great answer, and I really hope somebody can elaborate but:
The short answer is that we don’t know. The illnesses these treat are poorly understood on a chemical level, and it’s hard to use animal models to understand.
In general: these kinds of drugs affect neurotransmitters like ACh, dopamine, and serotonin. They can also work to help with seizures or migraines, implying a general change in brain activity. We don’t understand the full effects of these. Antipsychotics often help regulate dopamine levels in particular. Mood stabilizers are even harder, but probably help keep levels of neurotransmitters consistent and the brain in a more “relaxed” state.
It’s hard to say what drugs are good for what; the best we can do is what tends to work with our current knowledge. Essentially it comes down to the unique relationship between individual brain chemistry and how the drug is utilized by the body. This is why people with more complex disorders often have to try many medicines— nobody knows what will work, there are only educated guesses.
They can to some degree help stabilize your mood. The class of medications known as antipsychotics (really two classes, first and second generation) share a particular set of effects within the brain itself. They were originally made to treat psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, and were found later to also reduce the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
Mood stabilizers don’t really share a method of action so far as we know currently, so they’re not necessarily their own class of medication the way that beta blockers or ACE inhibitors are
Slightly off topic. If you’re asking this because of your own personal mental health, get a Genesight test. It can help your doctor more quickly identify what may or not work for you due to known metabolic interactions between common medicines and certain genetic markers.
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