Anyway, I thought I’d list the ones we tried and when just for the record.

At 5/6 years old:

Ritalin

Adderall

Concerta

Strattera

Risperdal

A whopping combination of Adderall & Risperdal (as yes, even back then when something went wrong or the meds weren’t working they just said “keep upping the dose”) resulted in him becoming psychotic and then dropping onto the ground into a grand mal seizure (the whole event of which was terrifying for me)

This landed him in a psychiatric hospital at 6 where he was given:

Risperdal (yes, even after that had partially caused the problem)

Depakote

Lithium they were staring him on when I demanded they let him out after about 5 days and I’m so glad I did as even today he can recount nearly every darn minute of the time he was there and how scary it all was to him

From 6 years old to 11/12 years old:  No Meds

11/12 years old:

Adderall – started again to help with inability to concentrate at school.  And again, he ended up with a psychotic/manic reaction to this and this landed us on:

Risperdal, which caused him to not be able to breathe after a week

Seroquel, straight dropped him to the ground and knocked him out

Lamictal, made him super hyper within 2 days and gave him a rash

Abilify, did correct the psychosis and worked well for a while (about 2 months) until he started to complain of a stiff neck and started rolling his neck and that was the end of that as those “tics’ can become permanent overnight with no warning and stay forever even once off the meds.  The psychosis has stayed corrected (it is gone) though and he is back to normal.

12 years old: No meds

And so, this is where we are now and why we are on no meds.  And hopefully we will stay here indefinitely or at least until he is older and can make his own informed decisions but one never knows what the future brings.  At least now with Rye I know that everything that is happening with him is organic to him and not the meds or a med reaction or the meds reacting with each other etc. etc.  and this brings me a great deal of peace for now.

http://www.bpkids.org/site/PageServer/PageServer?pagename=fd_pr_jan08

CABF, I think you do some good work but I’m concerned about your response.

You state:

Jacob’s family and doctors stand by his diagnosis of bipolar disorder 14 years after the initial diagnosis and his parents feel he is doing well. While Jacob experiences an unfortunate side of effect of his medication, he is alive, living at home, and enjoying his best year yet instead of being incarcerated in juvenile detention — an all too common outcome for many untreated kids.

This is heartbreaking for me to read.  Jacob has tardive dyskinesia and he is still a minor child.  He is permanently damaged and disabled from the medications he took as a child and continues to take.   He is so mentally distant in his interviews it is concerning.  Fortunately, now that Jacob is getting older and can participate in his own treatment, he seeking alternative treatments and working hard to get off of at least some of the medications.  And you think his only alternative to being medicated was to be in jail?  It seems irresponsible to tell people that.

My son was originally diagnosed as bipolar at 6 years old after a bad reaction to Adderall.  After a short stay in a psychiatric hospital (and only short because I fought like heck to get him out and he was released AMA), doctors tried to convince me that he too had a “debilitating illness” and must be  medicated to make it through life.  I didn’t listen.  It all just sounded wrong.  He is 12 now and did not have one more unmanageable symptom until we tried Adderall again.   And that too has now been corrected.

Is he bipolar?  According to his psychiatrist, yes.  He meets the criteria according to the DSM-IV.  Did he need to be medicated this whole time?  No.

And he’s not in jail and he has not committed suicide.  In fact, he has very high self esteem, tons of friends, and behaves no worse than any other 12 year old boy at school.  And, many of his teachers describe him as being mature for his age.

Now, we’ll see what the future brings.  He may need medication at some point.  And if he does, he will get it.

But I’d hate to see what he would look like now if we had believed his original doctors and bought into the scare tactics and medicated a very young, growng child all along.

He too may have been permanently disabled.

This is the video that came before The Medicated Child, the video about bipolar medication use in children, which I had posted about previously.

Like The Medicated Child, this video is free to view online and is well worth the time to watch it.

Of particular interest are the follow ups of these kids done years after the taping of the original video – be sure to read these.  It is so interesting to see what the kids themselves choose to do about taking their medications as they get older and can make their own decisions regarding medication.   The discussion and interview transcriptions are interesting as well.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/

Check it out.