My "recovery" has been challenging, like many of you and many others sharing our circumstances. Of the countless people suffering from antipsychotic and paliperidone induced depression and sexual dysfunction, we are all suffering badly.
The situation is generally the same for all of us. Psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical manufacturers for paliperidone and other antipsychotics failed to warn us about the risk of sever depression and sexual dysfunction. This is in spite of psychiatric literature, known conditions and first-hand accounts confirming that these risks are a serious problem.
In all cases that I've heard of, the psychiatrists involved in prescribing paliperidone and antipsychotics failed to warn us about the risks at all (this was the case with me, with three different psychiatrists who were involved in, variously, prescribing me it and overseeing me taking it. We need to hear as many stories as possible. It may be possible a small minority of psychiatrists actually warn patients of the risk of depression and sexual dysfunction, but they almost surely downplay it. For instance, one prominent Australian psychiatrist who also teaches budding psychiatrists at a medical school, claimed vaguely that he warns patients of such risks and teaches his students to do so, but he gave me and I have no concrete proof that he does so. Even if he does so, he probably downplays the side effects. I don't know of a single case nor would I believe a single case exists of a psychiatrist anywhere actually warning their patient that antipsychotics and paliperidone can cause severe, extremely painful, life-destroying, incurable and sometimes permanent depression and sexual dysfunction. They would simply never mention that scenario and would downplay the risks, implying that the depression and sexual dysfunction caused would be mild, easily and quickly reversible, hardly painful and easily treatable and curable. Why? If any psychiatrist tells their patient that antipsychotics and paliperidone can cause severe, extremely painful, life-destroying, incurable and sometimes permanent depression and sexual dysfunction, there is no person in the entire world who would want to take that medication. They would find every alternative possible and would do everything possible to avoid taking the medication.
There may be some patients who take antipsychotics and even paliperidone and never develop depression or sexual dysfunction. Then, there are those "lucky" ones who develop depression and sexual dysfunction (I've never heard of mild cases, only severe cases, so even these are terrible, life-altering and painful, for any period of time) but recover naturally relatively quickly after discontinuing the offending antipsychotic/paliperidone. (Relatively quickly, because it still takes a long time, usually, relative to the usual reversibility of side effects from most medications, including psychiatric ones, after discontinuing medication). Aside from discontinuing the offending antipsychotic/paliperidone and waiting for Father Time to help out (with varying degrees of success), I have yet to come across a proven cure or treatment for antipsychotic/paliperidone induced depression and sexual dysfunction. Believe me, I have scoured the earth and the vastness of the psychiatric profession, and will continue to do so, for it! And I am desperate for it!
Father Time and the human body healing itself doesn't count as an official treatment or cure that one can get from a doctor or psychiatrist.
Regular doctors have no treatments or cures. Psychiatrists are the ones expected by the medical community to have treatments for this, but they do not have proven treatments or cures.
Psychiatry has put us in harms way by giving us these dangerous antipsychotics/paliperidone, while not telling us about the risk of severe, terribly painful, incurable life-destroying depression and sexual dysfunction.
They are giving us poison and not telling us it is poison, for which neither they nor anyone else on the planet has any antidote. When we get poisoned, they deny we were poisoned, they deny they gave us poison, they deny that they poison they gave us poisoned us, etc. In spite of all of this, many of us stay in the cruel arms of the psychiatrists, like helpless babes, crying for help and relief. Besides all the lies they had already committed, they continue to lie and lead us on, since few psychiatrists acknowledge that there is no known cure or treatment for our problems. We then play the cruel lottery of testing out unproven treatments that force us to take further risks of harm and poisoning!
Through sheer ignorance and obliviousness, through callousness and negligence, through lying and deception, through their mistaken false ideas (and perhaps through deliberate cruelty on their part), they have blindsided us and poisoned us without warning, without informed our consent, and sent us into a dimension of suffering and hell. Even in the best case scenario at this point, when they do try to help us get treatment for our depression and sexual dysfunction, they continue to take us on a long hellish and painful ride, where nothing works of course and we're suffering and already poisoned by the original mother of the poisons, the antipsychotics/paliperidone which started the whole saga of suffering, but then we run the risk of further poisoning, all in the vain hope of some speculative, unproven relief or even an unproven miracle cure.
This is the nightmare we face. I've pressed and contacted hundreds in the psychiatric profession to find us a proven cure and proven relief for antipsychotic/paliperidone induced depression and sexual dysfunction. But no one knows of one and, worse, no one wants to go looking for one, nor try to invent one.
When they aren't taking us on this long, painful, hellish, hopeless ride of trying out unproven treatments that could poison us further, when they aren't causing us grief by perpetually denying our suffering, admitting the reality that they poisoned us, etc., when they aren't doing something else, additionally, that is unethical, inaccurate and harmful to us,
They leave us to suffer the cruel lottery of Father Time. In our dimension of hell, in our antipsychotic/paliperidone induced depression and sexual dysfunction nightmare, Father Time treats us differently. Father Time treats us very harshly. Even those who recover quickly and are rescued by Father Time and the Human Body, even for those who win Father Time's lottery, they suffer from Father Time, because all our days are terribly painful, so these side effects, even when they last 0-3 months, are horrific and unacceptable and life-altering. But for most of us, Father Time is very cruel to us, as we play Father Time's lottery, left with no other option or hope. Some may take over a year, some may take two years, and beyond that, some will take many years and some never recover.
When it comes to antipsychotics and paliperidone, psychiatrists sit at the throne of endless negligence and harm. They put everyone at severe risk of a hellish dimension. Those that are lucky enough to avoid the hellish dimension, i.e. the depression and sexual dysfunction side effects, may manage to avoid further negligence and harm. Any time they are at the altar of antipsychotics and paliperidone, however, they run the risk of entering the hellish journey.
I haven't recovered yet. It's been almost fourteen months of having my life destroyed, being in excruciating pain and distress and misery, being incapacitated and having lost all ability to do and enjoy most of the essential activities of life, of having my sex system destroyed, my romantic faculty and capability destroyed, of no ability to feel pleasure or good feelings, of loss of many faculties, of art enjoyment and ability, of exercise and the body, of beauty, religion, and making a living, of the social realms and energies and on and on. 15 months of feeling poisoned and in pain, waiting on the cruel lottery of Father Time.
Psychiatrists have known (or should have known) about these risks for a very long time, but they've never bothered to try to find a cure, knowing that it's incurable. For this very long time, with no known cure, and all these risks known, they've almost never bothered to warn us about these risks and evidently don't care enough to provide any safety, remedy or antidote whatsoever, for their patients who are on the verge of a long and dangerous journey through the valley of the shadow of death.
So that they conceal, distort and harm (failing to disclose the risks and incurability, and then leading patients to develop the side effects) and then conceal, distort and harm again (denying the antipsychotics/paliperidone caused the harm; denying their is no proven treatment/cure, and then leading us through the Unproven Treatment Lottery, as desperate as we are to leave the dimension of suffering, running us through the cauldron of risk of harm again, of further suffering.
What psychiatrists have done, via antipsychotics and paliperidone, is a violation of the law. They've caused us personal injury, suffering, all kinds of harm, etc. through their own negligence, medical malpractice and their dangerous drugs--enabled, endorsed and exacerbated by the prevailing culture and attitudes and policies of the profession of psychiatry, its teachers, researchers and leadership. They're putting too many people at risk.
I do think psychiatry has to be convinced, from within and/or from without, to take action and address these problems.
They need to acknowledge their faults and mistakes and the extent of this problem and their role in it. They need to appreciate how many people they have put at risk and how many people they have sent through the valley of the shadow of death on the unknown long journey of pain, because of their negligence, deceptions and cruelty. They need to care more for the people they have already hurt. They need to universally warn all patients fully, non-deceptively and honestly about these risks in all their seriousness and severity and not mislead or downplay anything.
They should report and collect the data on the suffering of all the people who develop our problems, the antipsychotic/paliperidone induced depression and sexual dysfunction, and especially the severe varieties that don't heal in time or ever, with Old Father Time.
They need to search for a cure. No treatments have been proven, and it's been a long time, too long.
They need to spread universal awareness, training and education about this problem through the entire profession as well as the public and with other, coordinating professions, institutions, disciplines and industries.
Other institutions, disciplines, industries and professions could play a role in helping us pressure psychiatry to reform, to address these issues and take positive effective action, and to spread awareness of this issue.