Abilify | ADHD Information

Hello I have 3 questions

1st- I have read some of the reviews on Abilify has anyone had any positive experiences with it? What about stomach ache as a sid effect?

2- We are fairly new to this ADHD thing and it is terribly stressing to deal with all of this. We are constantly trying new medicines to find out what will work best for him still while at the same time arguing with teachers and doctors. Any advice or ideas? We are at our wits end. It has become taxing on us and we are worn out and emotionally wrecked. He still attends therapy both with a psychiatrist and a psychologist and we go with him just needs some form of outlet or advice that takes the stress of this away for a bit.

3- Has anyone had any issues with Vyvanse? It was a wonder drug in the beginnig and now we have noticed it is almost as if he builds up a tolerance to it? He is tiny only 7 years old and about 30 lbs. He has been on dosages of 10 mg all the way up to 50mg but currently he is on 40. (This is good most of the time but the crying and agressive behavior is now an issue so we are now trying to pair the Vyvanse with Abilify to see if that curbs it. It has only been 1 day so far so I don't have any results yet. ) He has been on MANY and I do mean MANY drugs prior to this. Adderal, Straterra, Concerta, Focalin, Gunafacine, Rispederol, and currenlty Vyvanse. Any end in sight?

Hi,

I am so sorry to hear you are having such a hard time with medication. We are in the exact same boat as you. We have tried so many different medications. Some have been ok some worked short time it's definitely been a roller-coaster. We actually tried abilify on two different occasions. About six months ago we used it along with 25mg of Zoloft. Our experience was decent w/ this combination. However, Abilify for my little guy made him emotional and kind of zoned. He was doing ok in school and w/ friends but he was just not his normal self. But it seemed at the time the pros out weighed the cons. Anyway, we took him off because we were concerned about side effects. He'd had some really aggressive outbursts w/ friends at home and was getting more emotional that I was worried.

We ended up taking him off everything and having the school try to evaluate him so we could get a "baseline" to work from for the future. Now 5months later and lots of behavioral classes later we decided to attempt doing only the Abilfy. We did that last week actually and our results was not as positive this time. He was extremely emotional and zoned out. His teachers commented that he was just really "sad" and not "his bubbly self". Had a harder time focusing. My Dr. was going to have him do the Abilify til he seemed at the right dose and then start Adderall.

Anyway, what I wanted to share is that I w/ the Zoloft we had a better experience on this medication. I am thinking if my son struggles w/ some emotional or aggressive behavior that we will go back to Zoloft. Sooo if you find the abilify not working like you thought maybe give Zoloft a try.

I would love to talk w/ you more about your experience with this and about the other medications privately if you are open to that. Feel free to email me at laranekasteler@yahoo.com.

Good luck! I know how stressful this is and how hard a Mom it is to watch your kids struggle to feel safe in their own skin.

Rane

IIRC, there is no generic for Abilify.  And it is very expensive.  IMO, however, it is not that different from other antipsychotics like Risperdal which does have a generic. Thank you! We didn't have the best results with the respiredol so they moved us to Abilify. Do you have any others that are similar that you are aware of?Thanks! Do you know if there is a generic for this?