side effects from depression meds

[Momofteen]

My son has been taking paxil for a year now.  He also started taking abilify 5mg and deplin 7.5mg in December.  He has been experiencing muscle twitching for a month now so his doctor took him down to 2.5mg of abilify and them completly off the end of last week.  He is still noticably twitching in his upper body and face.  Could the deplin be causing this or does it just take a while for the ability to get out of his system.  Do you think the twitching will go away?  I would hate for him to carry this through his whole life.  He's only a teenager.  He never had any twitching when he was only taking paxil.

[Marsny]

My son recently started withdrawing off Abilify too and started twitching.  Did your son's twitching go away or is it permanent?   Your feedback is greatly needed.  I am sick about this now.  My son is only 6-years-old, and I do not want him to have a twitch with his head for life either.  Please advise.  Thank you so, so much!

[Marsny]

Also, I should add that I put him back on the Abilify same dose amount to see if the twitching would go away since it only started when I started to withdraw him slowly off it. So now we are back on the old dosage amount to see if the twitching will stop.

[Mark1313]

Interesting, I take tegretol for trigeminal neuralgia (TN).  I normally take two XL tablets a day and it controls the shocking pain very well.  In the spring  of 08 I became depressed and started on Prozac which worked well for 4-5 months.  I started to get a jaw type jerk/spasm after several months along with an increase in activity of my TN both on the left side of my face.  My doc switched me to Celxa which didn't work well so they added Welbutrin with it.  My TN along with the jaw jerking/spasm got so bad I was taking 1200mg of tegretol a day (the limit) and was still expirencing the shocks and spasms, the left side of my tounge is still cut up from all the  bites.  I stopped taking the antidepessants and viola the spasms stopped and I can control my TN with two tegs again.  The down side is my depression is now back in full force.  I can tell you this my choice is depression over TN pain, if you ever expirenced TN pain you know what i mean.  So now I'm wondering if for some of us  antidepressants somehow screw up the nervous system?  It took about three weeks after stopping meds for the spasms to stop, hope this helps.

[LeftCoastChick]

Deplin seems to be an anti-depressant booster, and Abilify could cause the twitching. It does take a while for it to get out of the system. If after a month off the drugs, and the twitching is still there, you migh want to consult with a psychiatrist.

[Momofteen]

He is under a doctors care and he has said this is somewhat on the rare side.  I was just wondering if anyone else had experienced similar side effects from Ability or Deplin.

[LeftCoastChick]

You really need to ask your doctor, unfortunately there is no way to give you advice on this, it should be looked into quickly by your son's psychiatrist.