My DS (age 7) has been on various stimulants (focalin, metadate, Daytrana, Adderall XR) for a little over a year. He seems to have an adverse reaction to all of them. He is hyper-focused when on the dose that works for his ADHD. He is sullen, morose, isolated, very irritable, mean, angry, etc. during the highest medicated time of the day. He has always been serious and defiant but it is definitely magnified while medicated.
Our psychiatrist recently tried to add Strattera as a mood stabilizer to the Adderall XR, but my DS will not tolerate the taste of the powder. He was spitting it out and cannot swallow pills. The next step is to add Zoloft.
My fear is this adverse reaction is due to underlying conditions. Currently, he is "diagnosed" with ADHD and ODD (at least at home). I have been researching bi-polar in children, especially due to the history of depression on my dh's side.
Is it right to treat a reaction to stimulants with another drug? Anyone else have this adverse side affect to every stimulant tried? Was there any drug that helped with the ADHD/ODD? HELP!
Thank you!
He didn't really show signs of depression before being medicated. He was very serious and definitely defiant at home and off-the-wall hyper. Really the final indication that he needed medication was when he started kindergarten last year and couldn't sit still for one minute.
He can't attend school without medication so I am at a loss on where to go. I am on the fence about bi-polar. He definitely shows some of the pediatric signs but maybe not enough to be a definitive diagnosis - maybe borderline based on their criteria.
We haven't tried Concerta but I will do some research. Maybe their release strategy would work better for him?
Thanks for your comments,
picrawf
I have faced similar. My ds could not tolerate anything we tried last year. At the time he did not swallow pills and I think that was part of our prob (many say they can be opened but I wonder?) after several stims (horrible!) we tried catapress.. too sleepy and emotional. We could not take the S one (cant think of name) bc he was under 7. Anyway long story short he is a K repeater this year. We took the summer off of all meds, had sinuse.tonsil and adenoid surgery and when we started back we started low and added prozac in to the mix and after a few days of emotions it started working and I think is is working great. He is prone to emotions in late afternoon and is getting more and more OCD (my big concern right now) but he has made wonderful progress and is learning and social and happy.
However my dd is also similar ... Concerta worked for her a long time but her defiance steadily increased as her dose was increased (or maybe it was a coincidence?) She got to a point that only venom came out of her mouth toward me... now I will admit we were in a negative cycle and I was not doing my best at trying to end it (I too am ADD) but.... she was not forming friends (still an issue) was not happy etc.. her impuslivness was inreasing and she was not learning (our doc had switched her from 47 or 54? concerta and 10 clondine to 20 adderall, 20 prozac and 5 clonodine to 25 adderal and ? riperdal to 25 adderall and 50 seroquil to 30 adderall, 100 seroqul and 500 depakote... sounds like a TON to me but she is doing great! she still cant stand her brother 70% of the time but we get along 90% of the time now and she is making progress at school and is interested in making friends etc.. I am sad that it appears she may be bipolar but very happy that she is doing so well.