You are absolutely right to contact your psychiatrist to discuss the panix attacks – those can be treated.
Are you seeing the psychiatrist for therapy too or do you have someone else that you see for therapy? If not, i would encourage you to seek out a counselor or therapist who can help you manage the panic attacks – there are some specific techniques that can be used in therapy – cognitive behavioral therapy in particular – to help reduce panic attacks.

You may want to think about talking to your boss or human resources department. Panic is a medical illness -and they cannot fire you for having the disorder. But if you don’t tell them you don’t have those rights.

Feeling aggressive and angry on Depakote seems a little out of the ordinary to me… does your doctor think it’s working? As Dr. Fink says in her post “Can My Bipolar Medication Be Increasing My Anxiety?” it’s not likely that Depakote or Lithium will cause anxiety. The “melancholy feeling of depression” you describe would be a more common side effect.

At 750 mg a day, you’re still on the low end of the range for Depakote.

We’re doing a biweekly series on medications used to treat bipolar mania, depression, and other conditions on Bipolar Beat. We started with lithium and Depakote and are currently working through common anti-seizure medications used to treat bipolar mania and reduce mood cycling.

In Bipolar Disorder For Dummies we cover the anti-anxiety medications. We’ll be addressing those in our biweekly series (called Bipolar Medication Spotlight), but probably not until later in the year.

Once we’ve covered several meds and I have some time, I’ll be posting our Bipolar Medication Spotlight entries here as a quick reference to bipolar meds.