in Ontario

[Guest guest]

Just wanted to respond to your post about meds. When everything

started with my dughter Anika Jan 8, 2004 we had had no unusual

problems parenting her. She was 13 years, 8 months at the time. She

was hospitalized for depression and had made a superficial cut to

her wrist. She was hospitalized for 8 days and started on lexapro.

Two weeks later she had a really serious suicide attempt, was

hospitalized for 18 days and they upped the dose of lexapro. When

that did not help they switched her over to prozac. This started the

year from hell for our family. The next 8 months are a blurr of day

treatment facilities, increasing her prozac dose and adding buspar

for anxiety, suicidal ideations, and a serious cutting addiction. By

October she was suicidal and hospitalized again and started on a

mood stabilizer, Abilify. She came home and a week later was

putting paperclips in electrical outlets. Nov 2 she was sent to a

state hospital for 5 weeks. They quickly stopped the prozac and

abilify and started another mood stabilizer called resperidal. She

got better and came home but in mid January was upset because she

was gaining weight so rapidly (60 lbs in less that a year). Her

psychiatrist stopped the resperidal and started geodone, which is

weight neutral. The weight didn't immediatly drop off so the end of

January she refused to take the geodone. After slashing her wrist

Feb 2 she ended up hospitalized again (we took her to a new

hospital) and they quickly recommended residential placement. She

had to go back to the state hospital for 5 weeks while waiting for

her spot to open up. She has now been in a residential treatment

facility for 4 1/2 months. They observed her for a month and then

increased her geodone dose and after observing no change in behavior

discontinued the geodone entirely. She is now on buspar 60 mg qd and

is doing very well. I feel like she is back to baseline. Looking

back over this whole fiasco I feel that her main issue was off the

chart anxiety and mild depression. I feel like the SSRI's turned my

daughter into a borderline mess, the mood stabilizers put a huge

bandaid on the mess and through plenty of exposure to other kids

acting out during her numerous hospitalizations, she learned new and

bizzare ways to cope. My daughter was not a self mutilator before

the psychiatrtic system helped her down this road. If I sound angry

I am, but more than just angry, traumatized. cindy