Barbara Steinberg's Page

One of the side effects of lithium and atypical anti-psychotics is shaking. Your shoulders can suddenly go out of control and start shaking as if you have Parkinson's Disease. When you try to eat in a restaurant, your hand shakes as the fork goes in your mouth. If you have hurt your arm, healing is much slower because tendonitis of the bicep, for example, needs you to keep your shoulder still, and you can't take ibuprofen because that could bring about lithium toxicity.

It is socially embarrass… Continue

I had a panic attack.

So I did some research on panic attacks. WEGO Health has excellent information on this.

You can get them when you have a phobia, and you have to face your fear. People who already have anxiety and depressive disorders face them, as well as schizophrenics. Traumatic events, such as family loss or war can cause them.

Panic disorder is when you experience these attacks on a regular basis. Your heart pounds rapidly; you perspire; breathing becomes difficult; there is chest p… Continue

About 9 months ago, my partner James who is low-functioning bipolar, had a change in the way he reacted to the medications he had been stabilized on for 5 years. They didn't work anymore.

At first I only saw the killer rage. Then, after he walked in and announced he had kidney disease and blood cancer, and no evidence would convince him otherwise, I realized that hypochondria had transmogrified into somatic delusions. 30 mg of Abilify daily was added to his regimen, and it worked. He was stabil… Continue

In the movie, "Michael Clayton," Arthur, a bipolar lawyer, is lead council representing UNorth, a company fighting a $3 billion class-action lawsuit against one of its products. Before a deposition in Wisconsin, Arthur stops taking his medicine, falls in love with one of the plaintiffs, and engages in alarming behavior, which lands him in a Wisconsin jail.

Michael Clayton comes to get him out. It seems Arthur has found irrefutable, incriminating evidence against the firm he's supposed to repres… Continue

This Friday, the medical journal Science will publish a study, which used new gene-scanning technology, where high-resolution techniques quickly scan the entire human DNA map. Scientists discovered 53 genetic mutations that were three times as likely to turn up in people with schizophrenia.

One of them distorts a protein, which guides neurons to their proper places during brain development. Another mutation changes "the shape of a molecule that transports glutamate, a chemical that excites neur… Continue