Hello everyone!

I'm new to this forum and I've joined for myself and to also get advice to help some family members.

My brother-in-law is Chinese (my sister and he met while she was teaching English to Chinese children, they are now married and in October my sister gave birth to twin boys!!) and he was recently diagnosed as Bipolar 2. I also have Bipolar 2 so I have sort of been giving my sister some advice about it...

But the medical system in China is completely whack and the doctors there are rather awful. You pretty much have to just go to a doctor and tell them what you want to be prescribed and they will prescribe it for you (as long as they get their illegal kickback from the pharm companies). So he has been prescribed citalopram, clonazepam and Abilify. The clonazepam is strictly for sleep and because the doc was gonna get his illegal kickback, my BIL doesn't really have much anxiety so my sister is trying to get him off of it...

She said she noticed a good change in him within a week of starting the Abilify but he doesn't want to take it for 2 reasons: 1) it's made him gain a lot of weight and 2) his parents, who are from a traditional generation, keep telling him that the medicine is poison and will kill him...

He and my sister and their boys are actually in the middle of getting his green card approved and are going to be moving to the US together in the next few months where he'll be able to get some real help once he is able to get a Social Security card, etc...

But I'm looking for some recommendations for mood stabilizers and anti-psychotics that cause the least amount of weight gain and have the most anti-depressant kick to them so if he wants to go to a doc to China again they'll have a few ideas of something to ask for to try instead of the Abilify (if they decide he can't handle the weight issue). TIA!