Risperdal Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Risperdal pages

This is our basic overview of Risperdal (risperidone). Clicking on a “More…” link will take you to a page with greater detail. The Comprehensive Risperdal pages contain all of the information from all of the “More…” pages, but with less explanatory material.

1.  Brand & Generic Names; Drug Class

US brand name:	Risperdal
Generic name:	risperidone
What is Risperdal (risperidone)?	Risperdal (risperidone) is in the Antipsychotics class of drugs.

More about Risperdal’s generic availability, worldwide trade names, and more

2.  What is Risperdal (risperidone) used for

2.1  US FDA approved treatment(s)

Schizophrenia in adults & adolescents; Bipolar 1 in adults, children & adolescents

2.2  Popular off-label uses

Augmenting SSRIs to treat OCD and/or major depression. Panic/Anxiety.

More about Risperdal approved & off-label uses

3.  When will Risperdal (risperidone) start working?

3.1  How long until Risperdal starts working

Like all antipsychotics you’ll feel something the next day. Within five to six days you’ll know if this med is going to do anything for you. Various studies and trials have shown results in 2 to 7 days.

3.2  Will Risperdal really work for what I have?

For schizophrenia excellent for “simple” / “normal” schizophrenia, schizoaffective and schizophreniform disorders. That is if you’ve tried a bunch of other meds and they haven’t worked, Risperdal probably won’t either. If Risperdal is your first med, go for it!
Odds it will work for bipolar mania - pretty good as far as antipsychotics go. If you tend to get dysphoric manias and/or mixed states instead of euphoric manias, Risperdal might become your best friend.

More about how long until, and how well will Risperdal work; and how Risperdal compares with other drugs

4.  How to take and stop taking Risperdal (risperidone)

4.1  How to take Risperdal

For schizophrenia: Ortho-McNeil-Janssen recommends starting at 2mg a day, increasing the dosage by 1–2mg a day until you reach 4mg a day. If needed, keep increasing the dosage until you reach 8mg a day. Once stable you can adjust your dosage as required with a range of 4–16mg a day.
For bipolar disorder: Ortho-McNeil-Janssen recommends starting at 2–3mg a day, increasing the dosage by 1mg a day until you reach the target dosage of 1–6mg a day. Once stable you can adjust your dosage as required with a range of 1–6mg a day.
I don’t think I’m crazy enough to understand their math. The dosages we suggest depend on how crazy you are at the time and if you’re already taking something. If you’re not too crazy and/or taking something, try 0.25 - 0.5mg and increase by 0.25mg every 2–4 days. If very crazy, go with Janssen’s schedule.

4.2  How to stop taking Risperdal

Your doctor should be recommending that you reduce your dosage by 0.25 or 0.5mg a day every 4 to 5 days, if not more slowly than that. Like all antipsychotics, you can stop taking it all at once in an emergency situation (e.g. a life-threatening allergic reaction), but you should do that only under a doctor’s supervision.

More about taking and discontinuing Risperdal

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5.  Risperdal’s (risperidone’s) pros and cons

5.1  Pros

Stops the rage induced by a dysphoric mania or mixed state like nothing else, in anywhere from an hour to the next day, without necessarily having to knock you out.
Other than the fact it’s working you can’t even tell you’re taking it for most applications.

5.2  Cons

While its side effect profile is low at the low dosages, at the dosages required to treat the primary approved applications - schizophrenia and bipolar - it frequently does a number on your hormones. The rates for EPS & TD are higher than some standard antipsychotics.

5.3  Interesting stuff your doctor probably didn’t tell you

Risperdal is one of those drugs where the med you take isn’t the substance that does anything. Risperdal is metabolized by your liver to create the drug that actually does something, and that drug is available as Invega.
More of Risperdal pros, cons, and interesting stuff

6.  Risperdal (risperidone) side effects

6.1  Typical Risperdal side effects

The usual: headache, nausea, dry mouth, constipation, sleepiness and lethargy or insomnia and way too much energy. Most everything of these go away within a couple of weeks, although the sleep & lethargy or insomnia & being wired may take a little longer.

6.2  Uncommon Risperdal side effects

Loss of libido, other sexual dysfunctions, swollen breasts, unexpected lactation (it’s especially unexpected when it happens to guys) and all sorts of other stuff related to increased prolactin and other hormonal wackiness.
The AP-induced movement disorders, especially tardive dyskinesia (TD) and extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS). Risperdal is currently known as the worst AAP, and one of, if not the worst AP in general when it comes to movement disorders.
Those all seem to be dosage-related, so the higher the dosage the more likely / worse they’ll be.
Also heart palpitations, tachycardia and other cardiac weirdness

6.3  Freaky rare Risperdal side effects

Rabbit Syndrome. Duck syndrome! Rabbit syndrome! Duck syndrome! Sorry.
Plus discolored feces, and increased pigmentation.
More about Risperdal side effects

7.  What Risperdal (risperidone) is best known for

Leaky tits. Young or old, male or female, anyone taking Risperdal, especially more than 4mg a day, has a good chance of lactating.
Also having the highest rate of TD & EPS of any atypical antipsychotic (although my money’s on Saphris eventually claiming that title).
More about Risperdal black box warnings, noted traits & effects

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8.  Risperdal (risperidone) half-life & how long until Risperdal clears your system

Half-life: 21 hours clearance: 4 days
Drugs.com’s drug-drug and drug-food interaction checker
More about Risperdal pharmacokinetics & noted drug-drug & drug-food interactions

9.  How Risperdal (risperidone) works (the best current guess at any rate).

Risperdal is sort of like Haldol on steroids, and is a potent antagonist of the the serotonin 5HT_2A serotonin, D₂ dopamine, alpha-1 and alpha-2a noradrenergic, and H₁ histaminergic receptors. It is also a moderate antagonist for the 5HT1, 5HT5, and 5HT7 serotonin, and the alpha-2b and alpha-2c noradrenergic receptors. The broad swath of serotonin or norepinephrine action helps to explain why Risperdal is helpful for rage. The potent D₂, along with 5HT_2A and norepinephrine/noradrenergic blockades explain why Risperdal will give you porno boobs and make you shake like epileptic marionette.
More about how Risperdal works. AKA Risperdal mechanism/method of action, or pharmacodynamics.

10.  Comments

I love Risperdal, and I miss taking it. I still keep some around for emergencies. And if worse came to worst, I’d take it again, TD be damned. I’d rather permanently look like an owl blinking Morse code, and whose tongue is sending out its own lewd messages, than deal with the crazy I went through in 2002.
More comments As if I didn’t go on long enough here.
Consumer/patient comments about & experiences with Risperdal

11.  Discussion board, PI sheet and other allegedly useful links

Crazy Meds’ Risperdal discussion board
Risperdal’s Full US Prescribing Information / PI Sheet
Allegedly Useful Links. Mostly any official sites we could find for this med and PI sheets from countries other than the US.

Risperdal Index | Brand and Generic Availability ›
Crazy Meds Comprehensive Risperdal pages

Bibliography

Date created Tuesday, 08 March 2011 at 14:08:23 Page Author: Jerod Poore Last edited by: JerodPoore

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Risperdal Basic Overview by Jerod Poore is copyright 2011 Jerod Poore

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Almost all of the material on this site is by Jerod Poore and is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets - those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about - and any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That’s usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that’s OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I’m usually cool with it.

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¹ While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internet is a large part of curing/managing the disorder.

² Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?
[begin rant] I rent a dedicated server for Crazy Meds. It’s sitting on a rack somewhere in Southern California along with a bunch of other servers that other people have rented. The hardware is identical, but no two machines have exactly the same operating systems. I don’t even need to see what is on any of the others to know this. If somebody got their server at the exact same time, with the exact same features as I did, I’m confident that there would be noticeable differences in some aspects of the operating systems. So what does this mean? For one thing it means that no two computers in the same office of a single company have the same operating system, and the techs can spend hours figuring out what the fuck the problem could be based on that alone. It also means that application software like IP board that runs the forum here has to have so many fucking user-configurable bells and whistles that even when I read the manual I can’t find every setting, or every location that every flag needs to be set in order for a feature to run the way I want it to run. And in the real world it means you can get an MBA not only with an emphasis on resource planning, but with an emphasis on using SAP - a piece of software so complex there are now college programs on how to use it. You might think, “But don’t people learn how to use Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in college?” Sure, in order to create stuff. And in a way you’re creating stuff with SAP. But do you get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on Photoshop?
Back in the Big Iron Age the operating systems were proprietary, and every computer that took up an entire room with a raised floor and HVAC system, and had less storage and processing power than an iPhone, had the same operating system as every other one, give or take a release level. But when a company bought application software like SAP, they also got the source code, which was usually documented and written in a way to make it easy to modify the hell out of it. Why? Because accounting principles may be the same the world over, and tax laws the same across each country and state, but no two companies have the same format for their reports, invoices, purchase orders and so forth. Standards existed and were universally ignored. If something went wrong it went wrong the same way for everyone, and was easy to track down. People didn’t need to take a college course to learn how to use a piece of software.
I’m not against the open source concept entirely. Back then all the programmers read the same magazines, so we all had the same homebrew utilities. We even had the forerunner to QR Code to scan the longer source code. Software vendors and computer manufacturers sponsored conventions so we could, among other things, swap recipes for such add-ons and utilities. While those things would make our lives easier, they had nothing to do with critical functions of the operating system. Unless badly implemented they would rarely cause key application software to crash and burn. Whereas today, with open source everything, who the hell knows what could be responsible some part of a system failing. [/end rant]