Olanzapine is an antipsychotic medication licenced for the treatment of Schizophrenia. It is also licenced for the acute and maintenance treatment of mania and mixed episodes of Bipolar I Disorder. In maintenance therapy of Bipolar I Disorder, it is also effective in preventing depressive relapses (however, lithium is superior to olanzapine in preventing depressive relapses). Olanzapine often causes weight gain, and there is a FDA warning that it increases the risk of diabetes mellitus.
My brother-in-law Sonny assaulted his 68 year old mother and blamed it on Zyprexa. He said his doctor should have taken him off of this after 10 weeks. Is this true? He was taking 20 mg. He was also drinking beer when taking his meds. Can this drug cause such rage?
Hi Aline,
Medically, it is extremely unlikely that Zyprexa (olanzapine) can cause rage. In fact, the opposite is true. Namely, it quickly calms an enraged person. Your brother-in-law will have to look elsewhere for the probable cause of his rage.
Zyprexa was the last medication that my psychiatrist tried with my then 18 year old daughter. Yes - it did work. It calmed her anxiety, yet left her in a more "flat" stage during her junior and 1/2 senior year of high school. Her father and I were so-so with the results yet she was just not experiencing the normal "up's and downs" a teenager should have been doing at this age. She elected to take herself off the medication after a year of therapy which taught her how to adjust herself to the anxiety and the bipolar glitches as we called them. At her age (19) they have not manifested to full blown manic highs or depressive lows yet.
The problem with Zyprexa is the weight gain also for many people. She gained too much weight for her build and especially being a teenager. The hand tremors were noticeable and she was very self conscious. We came up with the excuse of "I'm taking allergy medication" when people asked her why they shook.
Would I recommend this drug? Only if you are at the end of your rope and need the break from the kayos of the med. trials. My daughter needed sleep and the xanax just wasn't the key to handling the anxiety attacks/depression with the other meds. we had been trying. Zyprexa was very fast acting and I'd say a pretty clean drug.