It is approved for maintenance therapy in bipolar disorder (featuring mania/mixed states) as well, so in that respect it is a mood stabilizer.
Abilify has a lay-people reputation as a mood stabilizer, and is often used for depression esp bipolar depression at low doses to augment an AD.
Perhaps the reporters have relatives (or they themselves) with bipolar disorder?

Plus "mood stabilizer" sounds so much nicer than "antipsychotic". Antipsychotic makes you think of people with waxy catatonia in state hospitals with feces on the wall or some other horrible inhumane circumstances.
"Mood stabilizer" makes me think of some commercial featuring a depressed person in slippers and a robe who takes a pill and in the next clip is smiling and cutting flowers in his back yard. Mood stabilizers are the new ADs since bipolar disorder is the new ADs... and mood stabilizers can potentially include every drug in existence except ADs.

*that should read:
"bipolar is the new depression"
Woops.

Wow. Matt Winkler runs a very very tight ship with his reporters, giving them very grueling entry tests even with portfolio. Stories are checked and double checked by editors.... and the atmosphere at the company, at least while it was run by Mike was very very supportive or people with depression or manic depression, as well as major addictions, more than any other employer I can personally think of.

But everyone makes mistakes, you know. I've personally seen huge ones from BBC news covering a major event, as well as staples in the US,- UPI, ABC , Fox/Sky. And how many times have we all opened a newspaper or magazine and found that something was in error , and they had to issue an apology?

I personally do not know the ladies who wrote the piece but my guess is after reading it, it was an honest mistake made by someone who just didn't know the difference. I have emailed them and sent them your url. I don't think it was done with bad intentions. People just need better education, and Philip, your blog does that, and for that, we readers are grateful.

Took the words out of my mouth. Unfortunately, it supposedly does have mood stabilizing properties. SUPPOSEDLY. I was on it for 10 months and never felt "normal".

I agree with noone. To say that "absolutely no one calls [Abilify] a mood stabilizer" is patently incorrect. You may not find the phrase "mood stabilizer" in Abilify's promotional materials, but as noone points out, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

The larger point, though, is well taken. When drug companies avoid the term "antipsychotic" (which Abilify undoubtedly is, and which it was originally designed to be) in favor of a "softer" description, it's image adjustment, designed to make the drug more user-friendly. When a news agency does the same thing, it's evidence that BMS's marketing strategy has paid off.

One more thing... noone, Abilify is NOT approved as maintenance treatment for bipolar disorder, it's approved for treatment of ACUTE manic or mixed episodes. An important distinction, when you consider how these meds get FDA approval. (In practice, though, I agree, it's used for just about everything.)

noone...is that supposed to be an argument as to why a euphemism is better than the truth?

Well if my experience is any guide, psychiatrists use the term "mood stabilizer" regarding the atypical antipsychotics (probably as a euphemism so as not to scare their patients). To wit, I was told at least twice, "the treatment for depression is antidepressants, but if you actually have bipolar 2 aka hypomania, it's often an antidepressant plus a mood stabilizer." And then they mention stuff like Seroquel, Zyprexa, et al.

If it's become shorthand in the psych community, it's quite possible the reporter was on the receiving end of that shorthand. But still.

Steve, are you sure about that? I think it IS approved for maintenance as well as acute mania in Bipolar I. Not that any approval or lack thereof matters for the clinical experience. I've never been to a seminar where ANY of this stuff is approved for Bipolar II, yet it's passed out all the time. And, who cares about "approval" anyway. All that means is it was found safe for a clinical trial of 9 weeks. And then patients are told to take it for a lifetime.

according to the abilify website:

"INDICATION: ABILIFY is indicated for:

* Treatment of manic and mixed episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder in adults and in pediatric patients 10 to 17 years of age"

that doesn't sound like a maintenance approval to me

after hearing inpatient psych-docs talk for 2 months, they call antipsychotics mood stabilizers all of the time, and i think it is because they see a mood "stabilize".

seriously. i think when a drug works to control a person's moods whether the mood is up, down or agitated, any drug is then called mood stabilizing in that world.

This is a classic case of the use of a euphemism to put a positive spin on something controversial: anti-psychotic and hard psychotropic drugs. Could some of Bloomberg's journalists be on the take?

Etoh is my "mood stabilizer". What crap.

There is no class of drugs officially called "mood stabilizers". This term was first used with the antiepileptic drugs (Depakote, Tegretol) which were used without FDA approval for BiP. The rationale was that they worked for mania, which was seen as like epilepsy, an excited brain, sending signals fast and furiously. Then after the antipsychotic drugs began to be used for BiP, without FDA approval again, they were sometimes included in the term "mood stabilizers" in the psych literature. This trend must be resisted at all costs. Antipsychotic drugs can cause agitation, anxiety, akathesia. In fact, Abilify is a partial dopamine agonist and is even more prone to be associated with mania and psychosis. I have noticed that the psych literature no longer uses the term mood stabilizer for antipsychotic drugs, but this usage is widespread in all the places where people do psychiatry, which is eveywhere now. Of course, it is a made-up term in psychiatry, like so many made-up terms, meant to be reassuring while they tinker with your mind and body.

I'm bi polar professional female trying to live a productive life I've suffered all of my life I have taken every drug out there. When they started this whole try anti psychotic as off label I was naïve. I tried Abilify Geodon now Seroquel. I have got AK tremors weight gain. I'm having withdrawal issues on Ser (nausea, headaches, etc). I am completely against anti-psych for bi polar imo.