Tardive Dyskinesia: A Middle-Age Man With Depression

W. Clay Jackson, MD, DipTh|Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Family Medicine, The University of Tennessee

A 45-year-old White man with treatment-resistant depression failed treatment with citalopram and venlafaxine. He subsequently experienced remission of his depressive symptoms when aripiprazole was added to duloxetine. At a routine follow-up appointment at your clinic after 6 months of treatment, he reported licking his lips often. You notice that he moves his jaw muscles and his tongue more frequently than is normal for the patient.

Your next step is to assess this patient via the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale (AIMS). It gives you a rating across 7 symptom domains of 0 (no symptoms at all) to 4 (severe). You can quantify the patient's symptoms based on that total score.

You diagnose tardive dyskinesia (TD) in this patient.