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Avatar universal

children on meds. and there side effects

My son is on Celexa for OCD,tic disorder, anxiety. He's 9. He's doing very well on it. A friend of mine who's own son is bipolar is also on celexa. She swears his penis has had a stunt in growth. I thought she was ridiculous!! She mentioned this last year. I thought she was ignorant!! Then, recently I was in my sons room when he was changing and my god his penis looked extremely tiny!! I thought I was seeing things. Is this possible? Is this one of the side effects? I'm very concerned, the poor little guy has issues already, I hate for this to be another one. The only other side effects he's had from Celexa are, a little tired, urinating more at night, and a huge appetite. He's gained weight. But we can work with that. Any info. you have on Celexa and children with genitilia problems would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
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Avatar universal
Celexa is evil.
I swear it is!
My doctor put me on Celexa and it sent me to the emergency room in a full blown allergic reaction with panic attack symptoms. Rather sucked. But Celexa isn't high up on my list really. And all medicines we use could have effects long term or not that we have no idea about. We can't know the effects until 20 years after someone started using it, and only if they use it faithfully. Like everyone hailed Ritalin as the super drug, but I know for a fact that there were many cases where Ritalin did more damage than help. We can never be certain, but the best thing we can do is keep trying to get the kids the help they need. And if they need medicines, then you just have to try them until you hit the right one. And I know from experience it aint pleasant, but its necessary.

Tiggy
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
BenjaminSpicer -
Do you have children with behavioral health problems? How dare you tell someone that they are giving their children "psychiatric poison". Yes, I believe that there is a problem with over-medication but not when all other options have been exhausted.  I have a 4 year old that has been on medication since she was 3. She was just prescribed celexa and focalin today. Do I want her on medication - NO. But that's the fact of life when her birth mother did meth when pg and had behavioral health problems herself. We're hoping to have her off one day when she is capable of controlling her moods and not presenting a possible danger to herself or others. So unless you're willing to come to my house and show an alternative way, I think you should find another forum to preach your thoughts.
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Avatar universal
How dare you or your friend drug your child with psychiatric poison?If you havent yet permanently damaged them and you probably have then you will.

There is no science to support psychiatric drugs and you are not giving your child medication as described by the idiot of an MD you are drugging your child with psychiatric poison .
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
could be complex partial seizures too.
This was the case for our 9 year old son.
EYE BLINKS over and over are  a dead give away!!
and the throught clearing(could be a sign of )
a type of diabetes.The doctors have to test specifically for this kind.
this type causes silent seizures.
And often is mistook for OCD in children...
a simple EEG would be the tell all..
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I will definitely look into the Inosital and Omega 3 for his problems. Yes obsessing thoughts are anothr sign of OCD. My son has more generalized anxiety with some aspects of OCD. He doesn't have any rituals. He does allot of tooth chomping, ( opening and closing his mouth quickly), blinking, and sometimes vocal noises- it comes and goes. He worries so much. If you check out generalized anxiety you'll see that these 3 things sometimes go together: anxiety/ocd/and tourettes/tic disorder.  Tomorrow I am going to check out the video's and websites you suggested. With my son he has some kind of deficiancy in his brain that effects his anxiety levels, etc.. maybe the omega 3 would help. It's so damn hard. He's such a sensitive soul. Well thanks again. I appreciate it. We'll just keep on trucking and try to make the right decisions.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Found the Omega 3 studies NIH workshop.  First one's mostly intro and the usual 'waiver' type clause, the others are re the studies relating to differing disorders - one of them (I can't remember which) I remember finding hard to understand because of the strong accent and had to watch a few times to get used to it,  but you might not.




http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega1.ram   (introduction)  

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega2.ram

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega3.ram

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega4.ram

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega5.ram

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega6.ram

http://videocast.nih.gov/ram/omega7.ram


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Avatar universal
Thank you small voice! I commented on the child behavoiral forum. Got a definite NO from a Doc.that celexa has nothing to do with childrens normal genitilia growth. I'm not convinced. I'll be doing allot of research and talking to my son's Doc's. Hopefully some day my son can come off his meds altogether ( safely) One person on the other forum suggested that her son had similiar issue and she thinks it's just life's hardships, etc.... Putting my son on meds was a last resort. He suffered for quite a while, obsessing, obsessing, vocal noises, head jerking, not sleeping, etc.... due to his history I know it's definitely biological. I understand that there are also psychological implications too. We are a very open family and talk, hug, cry, and denial is not in our vocabulary. We don't stick our head in the sand, or just give a child a pill to solve life's hardships. It's gray, and complex. Were working on it. Thanks for listening. I'll reply if I find out anymore on this testosterone issue. Thanks again.
Pegnanie
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
You're very welcome.

One thing is sure - you care about your son and you've got an open mind, and one day I hope he will be able to live without drugs with you helping to get him through.

He will, I'm sure, with you behind him.

Thank you for updating. I'll look in now and again and check the thread :-)

Very best to you and to your boy.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Hopefully you're aware of withdrawal problems with these drugs (in case the psych decides to take your child off the SSRI).


Just in case you're not aware, then please read the pdf file
here (but be aware that since the expert wrote that, quite a lot of people have found that 'changing over to prozac,  while theoretically sound, somehow made things a lot worse - and so it may be best to taper off Celexa itself using tools like a pill cutter, a razor for divisisions the pill cutter won't work on, and a metal nail file for tapering VERY slowly if needed or if there's only a tiny bit of a pill which you need to half).


Hopefully you have acrobat reader, but can find another source for the article if you haven't.

http://www.ssri-uksupport.com/files/protocolwithdrawalssris.pdf


Sorry I got your name wrong in the last post, and somehow did the good luck bit twice :-)  Once too many though can't be bad!
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
You're welcome, but I'll have to warn you that I did search quite a long time for further research that studies the relationship and I couldn't find any - which doesn't mean there isn't any, but it does mean that it'll be hard to find if there is :-)

What I could find were good examples of 'twisting trial results' to suit a positive outcome for the drugs, ie:

that people who were unsuccessfully treated with antidepressants
had a low testosterone level, therefore people who were 'more sick' perhaps had low testosterone levels (ie, it's not the drug).

Which is strange as plenty of people who say they have improved on/are doing well on SSRIs are ALSO complaining of the side effect of sexual dysfunction.

Common sense and more often goes out of the window when funding comes from the pharmaceutical industry...

Unfortunately, the same applies to doctors influenced by the reps who disseminate somewhat 'skewed' information at the surgeries, and of course many doctors are also too busy to think about 'reading between the lines' of pharmaceutical 'evidence'.

Hence so many drugs being approved... and then  a few years later being removed.

But maybe the doc/psych you'll be talking to will think about it with an open mind either way at least :-)

Would be interested if you DO find anything else or your psych happens to have come across it before and has looked into it.

Good luck.

Good luck with it.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
Thanks for the info. I will definitely check out the website! In addition we will be meeting with my son's psychiatrist in a couple of weeks and I will broach the subject. It kind of makes sense if testosterone is needed for growth, and celexa effects the testosterone?! Talk to you soon.
Pegnanie
Helpful - 0
242532 tn?1269550379
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
There is a child behavior forum on medhelp that might be able to help you with research information, I can not, I am not a child psychiatrist.  But, the size of a boy's penis at 9 usually has no relationship at all to what will happen with the hormonal surge of adolescents.  I doubt very much if any medication will effect this at this age, but prescribing for children is still a relatively unknown area, and I may be wrong...more research is in order.
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
If it isn't just the natural worry of two mothers and normal development (or some other explanation is offered) then this may be worth investigating?


1.  Antidepressants, particularly SSRIs (the class Celexa belongs in) have a well known side effect of sexual dysfunction.

2.  Sexual dysfunction can be caused by lowered testosterone levels.

3.  The growth of male genitalia depends on testosterone.

4.  Two children, both on an SSRI and both with the same problem, so - do antidepressants interrupt or affect testosterone?

I've done a quick search and this came up:

http://www.mhsanctuary.com/rx/testos.htm


A long long way down the page, the conclusion of this particular article is:

"...This brief report raises more questions than it answers. However, it is the first description of an association between low free testosterone levels and antidepressant induced sexual dysfunction. Further research is needed to evaluate this relationship for cause and effect factors, as well as avenues to explore regarding treatment of ASD involving hormone replacement..."


(Definition ASD further up the article:  Antidepressant induced sexual dysfunction)


The article is dated "...Psychiatry On-Line 1999
revised 10/3/2000..."

There may have been more research done on this subject since that date.






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