We have been talking a lot about medications here on ADHD Central lately. Part of the reason for this is that so many of you write in with questions about medications and you are wanting to know things such as whether or not certain medications are effective. These are always difficult questions to answer particularly because these types of questions are always best answered by the prescribing doctor or your pharmacist. But what we can give to you are resources on how to find your own answers.
Another thing that I can personally offer is my experience as a caregiver in witnessing how particular medications affect my son. In a previous post I talked about our experience with Risperidone or Risperdal. In this post I am going to give an update on how the Risperdal is working for my son. I am also going to talk about the process of adding Celexa, an antidepressant, to my son’s medication treatment plan.
Note of precaution: I always feel the need to include a small disclaimer any time we do discuss medications. None of us here are medical doctors or pharmacists. This post and others like it are written from my perspective as a parent. The decision to use medication to treat your child’s symptoms is a very personal one. You need to do your own research, talk to your child’s doctors, and reach your own conclusions. What works for one person will not work for another. If you do use medication as a part of your child’s treatment plan you will need to find the right medication(s), at the right dosage for it to be effective. Unfortunately nobody can tell you which medication will be most effective for your child’s symptoms. At most, your child’s doctor can give you an educated guess.
Some background: My son is fifteen. He has always had extreme symptoms of ADHD but his primary diagnosis is autism. I personally never wanted him to use any medication to treat his symptoms and we have always tried to exhaust other treatment methods first. Adolescence hit my son hard and he began to have crying jags which increased in frequency along with general agitation and trouble sleeping. At this point we decided that medication might ease his suffering.
When he was 12 we made an appointment with a pediatric neurologist recommended by my son’s pediatrician. It took nearly six months to get the initial appointment and so he was nearly 13 when we put him on a very small dose of Prozac. The Prozac worked wonderfully for about 18 months. He was no longer fearful of so many things (previously he was just about agoraphobic and didn’t want to leave the house) and his crying spells diminished and finally he was sleeping well at night. But shortly after his 14th birthday things changed for the worse. The crying spells came back despite no change in his environment. In addition to the crying he was also becoming extremely anxious and agitated. The mood swings combined with testosterone cumulated into behaviors we had never seen before, namely aggression.
