Hi everybody. Haven't posted in many months but I have a specific situation I'm concerned about, namely, my oldest, difficult child 2, is with a new psychiatrist who has a prettty good reputation among other docs and other professionals I've met through my divorce.
She wanted badly to go off all her medications, and since she hasn't shown any improvement to her Major Depressive Disorder with SSRI's since she first started taking them nearly four years ago, we asked him to supervise a medication wash. She started tapering off Effexor, but he was concerned about her anger and sadness, so he prescribed Abilify.
As of today, she has been off the Effexor for two weeks and is titrating (is that the correct term?) up on the Abilify to 10 mg. (she is at 7.5 today). The doctor says that's a relatively low dose, but last night she exhibited some restlessness and anxiety I hadn't seen before, like she wanted to climb the walls or jump out of her skin. She hasn't had any of really worrisome side effects, like tremors, fever, muscle stiffness, but I was wondering, have any of you seen your child get more "hyper" as the Abilify went up?
The doctor said that our daughter has pretty much tried all the medications that help the greatest number of people, and what's left to try are things like lithium, that help a smaller number of people but help them a lot. Still, he said all he could promise with the lithium is that her depression wouldn't worsen.
After considering the options he laid out, my daughter and I agreed that should the Abilify not help, she would like to go off of it and see how she is with no medications.
What kind of support do you think we should be planning for her now? She currently is attending a therapuetic day school where she meets twice a week for one on one counseling with a psychologist and has weekly group therapy, plus she sees her regular outpatient therapist once a week, twice if she feels particularly fragile. Her dad is balking at the idea of therapeutic boarding school (cost, I think, but he says he's worried it isn't the right treatment for her ) and the staff at the therapeutic school say they don't believe she needs a 24-hour therapeutic milieu.
She's not suicidal but she did try to cut herself again (hasn't done it for two years) a couple of weeks ago, superficially, and said it hurt, which is a good sign. She lapsed once last September and smoked a joint with some friends, but swears she has been clean for the past 18 months otherwise. She's pulling away from a lot of her old friends at public school but hasn't made any close attachments at her new school (total student body: 13 kids). She's miserable at my house and at her dad's house but we're worried that if we send her away to school she'll be miserable there, too.
Is there any hope for us? :smile:
She wanted badly to go off all her medications, and since she hasn't shown any improvement to her Major Depressive Disorder with SSRI's since she first started taking them nearly four years ago, we asked him to supervise a medication wash. She started tapering off Effexor, but he was concerned about her anger and sadness, so he prescribed Abilify.
As of today, she has been off the Effexor for two weeks and is titrating (is that the correct term?) up on the Abilify to 10 mg. (she is at 7.5 today). The doctor says that's a relatively low dose, but last night she exhibited some restlessness and anxiety I hadn't seen before, like she wanted to climb the walls or jump out of her skin. She hasn't had any of really worrisome side effects, like tremors, fever, muscle stiffness, but I was wondering, have any of you seen your child get more "hyper" as the Abilify went up?
The doctor said that our daughter has pretty much tried all the medications that help the greatest number of people, and what's left to try are things like lithium, that help a smaller number of people but help them a lot. Still, he said all he could promise with the lithium is that her depression wouldn't worsen.
After considering the options he laid out, my daughter and I agreed that should the Abilify not help, she would like to go off of it and see how she is with no medications.
What kind of support do you think we should be planning for her now? She currently is attending a therapuetic day school where she meets twice a week for one on one counseling with a psychologist and has weekly group therapy, plus she sees her regular outpatient therapist once a week, twice if she feels particularly fragile. Her dad is balking at the idea of therapeutic boarding school (cost, I think, but he says he's worried it isn't the right treatment for her ) and the staff at the therapeutic school say they don't believe she needs a 24-hour therapeutic milieu.
She's not suicidal but she did try to cut herself again (hasn't done it for two years) a couple of weeks ago, superficially, and said it hurt, which is a good sign. She lapsed once last September and smoked a joint with some friends, but swears she has been clean for the past 18 months otherwise. She's pulling away from a lot of her old friends at public school but hasn't made any close attachments at her new school (total student body: 13 kids). She's miserable at my house and at her dad's house but we're worried that if we send her away to school she'll be miserable there, too.
Is there any hope for us? :smile: