Oh god so sorry! I meant useful. I found it useful to read of your personal journey.
Regarding Lithium for schizophrenia, I believe it's use only is to manage affective (mood) changes rather than psychosis.
Personality change is very hard to objectively consider. Personalities change with time, so it's harder to compare if a drug will alter someone's personality compared to being untreated for decades in an objective way.
All that said, it's commonly described that people feel different on some medications and I think that has to be accepted. Even if it's hard to objectively measure, and hard to quantify.
We often think of mental illness as distinct from personality (yet we also often see personality disorders as mental illness a paradox).
Of course then we should expect treatments will alter personality.
That said we seem to see personality changes claimed with a number of medications, from antiepileptics to statins used for cholesterol, and beta blockers.
Regarding Lithium for schizophrenia, I believe it's use only is to manage affective (mood) changes rather than psychosis.
Personality change is very hard to objectively consider. Personalities change with time, so it's harder to compare if a drug will alter someone's personality compared to being untreated for decades in an objective way.
All that said, it's commonly described that people feel different on some medications and I think that has to be accepted. Even if it's hard to objectively measure, and hard to quantify.
We often think of mental illness as distinct from personality (yet we also often see personality disorders as mental illness a paradox).
Of course then we should expect treatments will alter personality.
That said we seem to see personality changes claimed with a number of medications, from antiepileptics to statins used for cholesterol, and beta blockers.