Re: Very worried!

[Guest guest]

Wow, , you are a wealth of information about meds. I LOVE your look into

how things could be in the future with medical technology, that would be so

awesome to be able to do that! Imagine how much misery could be avoided if there

was a way to do that now!

I am guessing you are somehow involved in the medical industry? The story you

shared about the woman's daughter is pretty amazing, I can't even imagine how

difficult that must have been for her and her daughter, and then in the end to

have the same medication she was on in the beginning that wreaked such havoc end

up being the one she is on now and is working, that is really something!

I think that hormones play a big part in all of this, especially at the ages of

a lot of the kids we're dealing with, and with the 14 year old girl. It could be

that through the time while she was hospitalized, in residential, and then back

home that the natural hormonal changes at that age caused her chemistry to

change, therefore enabling her to tolerate the medication that she initially

could not tolerate. Who knows, it's unfortunately a big guessing game with a lot

of this.

I know with my son, his symptoms were almost completely under the radar until he

hit puberty and then all hell broke loose. And certainly in my case, the two

episodes I dealt with were postpartum and pre-menopause, both situations where

hormones can (and in my case did) go haywire.

> More thoughts:

>

> (1) The state of the art/science of medicine is still, unfortunately,

trial-and-error (or guessing-and-trying). There's all sorts of research going on

which will eventually result in better assessment of how a particular person

will respond to a particular med at a particular dose without having to go thru

quite as much guessing. I picture a day when the person arrives for his/her1st

appointment with the psychiatrist and has a blood test (to identify how he will

metabolize and respond to a variety of meds). Then he'll have a brain-imaging

scan. The brain scan will light up the various brain pathways and identify

particular patterns which are causing the person to have problems. " Yes! See how

the electrical activity moves from brain area 3C then over to brain area 14D?

That is the pattern we see when a person is having the kind of depression which

responds well to medication X. His blood test results show that he will respond

to medication X but that he will need lower doses at wider intervals compared to

the average person. "

>

> (2) Meanwhile, of course, you need a dedicated team of professionals and

family to watch how the child responds to a given med. And, of course, starting

2 meds at once can make it difficult to figure out which med is causing what. I

am so glad your son is at --in a controlled setting with professionals who

can closely monitor the results of whatever is being tried and keep him safe

along the way.

>

> (3) Kids can have paradoxical reactions to benzodiazepines (Ativan etc.) Those

meds can help children to feel calmer. But sometimes, instead of having a

calming effect, those meds can make a child feel worse or else just have no

effect at all. My son was tried on various meds in this category and experienced

no effect one way or another.

>

> (4) I'm not familiar with tri-cyclic antidepressants (other than knowing they

exist). I had on-the-job learning with all the meds my son took over the years,

but he was never tried on the tri-cyclic family of meds, so I'm ignorant about

them. However, the reports of success with tri-cyclics by others on this

Listserve sure sound intriguing! A whole nother category of meds that might

help!

>

> (5) About kids who get worse on SSRIs: even that rule of thumb can apparently

be inconsistent. The 14 year old daughter of a woman I work with had been

started on an SSRI for depression and anxiety. But she got worse instead of

better. She was eventually hospitalized and placed on a mood-stabilizing med.

After about a month of inpatient psychiatric acute care, she was transferred to

a residential treatment center and stayed there about 6 months. Well, she's been

home for several months now and is doing great. She's only on one med now. And

which med is that? The SSRI she was on at the beginning! Go figure. But her

story does illustrate the bottom line: she was kept in an inpatient/residential

setting while all the med-changing was going on and was very stable on the med

before being discharged home. And--who knows?--maybe after some more months of

doing well on the SSRI maybe she'll get worse and need a mood-stabilizer. (I

want my rule of thumb back!)

>

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> > ,

> >

> > No highjacking at all:) I'm on groups for Tourette's OCD and Lyme and I

honestly would not have survived had it not been for the amazing, insightful,

knowledgable, and caring people on these groups, this one especially. Thanks to

people like and so many others, we can all learn and help each other, and

in this case, possibly solve a longstanding issue that has been wreaking havoc

with you and your daughter.

> >

> > Medications can be so tricky, I've learned that the hard way through my own

experiences. Before my postpartum experience, which was almost 16 years ago, I

was like many people who would just listen to whatever a doctor told me to do or

take and not question it. What I went through as a result was an unimaginable

nightmare, but I'm so grateful it happened when it did because I hear about so

many elderly people who don't know any better and just take whatever their

doctor prescribes with disastrous results.

> >

> > I feel so badly for people with mental illness who aren't involved in any

groups like this and are at the mercy of incompetent psychiatrists and doctors

who hand out medicine like candy and paint everything with a wide brush. I went

through 5 psychiatrists in a 5-month period during my postpartum situation, and

at one point I counted 18 bottles of different medicines I had been given, many

at the same time, which one after the other only worsened my condition. At one

point, I began having mild convulsions and almost had to be hospitalized because

of the medications.

> >

> > By the time I finally got to the last psychiatrist who knew what she was

doing, she was horrified to hear all of the medications and the dosages I was on

at that point. She was so kind and patient and never gave up while she slowly

weaned me off everything and got me on the right medication, Elavil. She truly

saved my life!

> >

> > So the moral to this story? I learned the hard way that these days you

really have to be your own doctor to a point, and always listen very closely to

your own body and your gut feelings.

> >

> >

> >

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> >>

> >> ,

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> >> I want to thank you for posting this. I had no idea that bi-polar responds

to different meds. My sister is dx bipolar. I have had family members and

doctors say they think I might have it, but I have not been diagnosed. However,

just as I told in my earlier response, I get that " jumping out of your

skin " sensation when I try to take an SSRI. I put it in those exact terms before

I even read your response. I think it might be time that I personally see

another doctor. My dd's doctor has said that she too may have a bipolar

component, so if for some reason things do not get better I may need to talk to

her psychiatrist about this. Sorry to hi-jack your post , but I felt like I

needed to respond to this one.

> >>

> >>

> >>>

> >>>> Hi all,

> >>>>

> >>>> I am SO beside myself with worry right now! As you know, my son was

admitted a week ago to 's. Over the past 3-4 months, his downward spiral

has been very rapid in just about every respect, including losing almost 20 lbs.

in less than 2 months. Of course my husband and I both discussed in great

detail, his rapid decline and I also stressed my concern about his weight loss

with doctors at 's when we admitted him. He's almost 16, when he was

admitted he was 5'5 " and weighed 113 lbs, and literally looked anorexic. . I

called this morning to find out he's lost another 2 lbs. since a week ago and is

now down to 111 lbs.!!

> >>>>

> >>>> I know for a fact he was not exhibiting any type of eating disorder

behaviors because I was with him at all times and would have known if he was

doing anything along those lines. He clearly had a reduced appetite and as time

went on it became more of a struggle to get him to eat, but I had attributed

that to his OCD/anxiety and the progression of the illness. Now that I look back

on things and analyze the whole picture, I believe it is possible that the

Lexapro (and Risperdal) may be the cause of his weight loss and psychotic-like

behavior. He started on Lexapro in mid-November, and prior to that had not been

on any meds because his condition wasn't severe enough to warrant meds, and we

were coming at treatment more from the Lyme angle at that point.

> >>>>

> >>>> He's been on 20mg. of Lexapro now for about a month, started on 5mg.

initially. He's on a very low dose of Risperdal (.5mg.) and started on that

about a month ago. Here's the thing.......I had two HORRIBLE bouts with severe

anxiety, one was postpartum, the other pre-menopause. i was living in two

different places when each episode occurred, and both times I was put on

medication after medication that made my symptoms so bad to the point where I

could barely eat, sleep or function from one minute to the next. I would say it

was sort of like a psychosis, but I wasn't exhibiting odd behaviors, just going

crazy in my own head. Both episodes were the biggest nightmares of my life that

I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

> >>>>

> >>>> Now I never took Lexapro or Risperdal, but I did try Paxil, Zoloft, and

probably a dozen other anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds, which all sent me

completely through the roof. I basically had the opposite reaction that most

people do to a lot of these meds, and I felt like I was ready to crawl out of my

skin, it was beyond horrible and unbearable.

> >>>>

> >>>> So here I sit, watching my son exhibiting severe anxiety, rapid weight

loss, agitation, and behaviors that were clearly not present before he started

on Lexapro or Risperdal. Now of course, these behaviors could be attributed to

the natural progression of his OCD, but the things like urinating and

defecating, severe withdrawal, and especially the weight loss and decreased

appetite were non-issues prior to him starting on Lexapro.

> >>>>

> >>>> I googled Lexapro and psychosis to see if I could find anything and sure

enough I did find some postings from people saying they experienced

psychotic-like behavior and thoughts while on Lexapro. I had spoken just

yesterday to my son's psychiatrist at 's about my medication experiences,

and this was before I just learned about my son's additional weight loss this

morning since being admitted. The psychiatrist feels it's a definite

consideration about my experiences with meds and deciding what my son should be

on.

> >>>>

> >>>> I placed a frantic call to his psychiatrist, the therapist, and the

dietician at 's this morning, I am so beside myself right now it's all I

can do not to hop on a plane to Wisconsin. Not to see my son, but just to spend

a few days meeting with his doctors to brainstorm on medications and treatment

moving forward now that they've had a little time to observe him. It's difficult

to do this type of thing over the phone so far away. If I did go, I wouldn't

want my son to even know I'm there, it would strictly be to meet with doctors

and staff.

> >>>>

> >>>> Wondering what you all think?

> >>>>

> >>>> Thanks

> >>>>

> >>>>

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