Q:  Cough as a Side Effect? : Dissociation Related to Meds?

My husband has been on Lamictal for over two years with excellent results.  He also takes Abilify.    No need for anti-depressant which caused mania and mixed episodes.  He has for the past four months, been clearing his throat and it is getting worse.  There is not problem with his throat, ears, sinus.  Could it be the medication? 

Also, he tends to almost disassociate from me for a month or so and then he drops back into the relationship and wonders where I've been.  Could this be related to the meds?


Dear Ms. J' -- 
"Cough" is listed as a side effect of aripiprazole (on one site it's listed as "common", as opposed to "uncommon"). As for lamotrigine, I've used that medication so much I think I'd recognize a common side effect, and have never heard a patient describe what you're describing here.  As I've written about before on this site (not that I'd expect you to have dug through the archives to find it...), the only way to know for sure that a medication is not the cause of a side effect is to taper it off and see what happens (please, though, readers, don't stop any of your medications on your own to figure out something like this; you could end up with a worse problem easily. Talk with your doctor to work out a plan including what problems to watch out for and how they're going to be handled). 

As for the "dissociation", that is harder to interpret but my first thought would be some sort of cycling that the medications have not entirely controlled. You could leave a voice mail for his psychiatrist describing this observation (noting that you don't necessarily expect a reply, just wanted to pass along an observation in case it matched up with something the psychiatrist was seeing) to make sure that is not overlooked, in case it is important. 

Dr. Phelps

Published May, 2006