7 year old daughter w bipolar

[momluvs]

Hi everyone. New to this forum... Been struggling with issues with my daughter ever since she was a baby. Always hard to soothe her. Always had mood swings. Very recently, her psychiatrist believes she had a complete cycle and started her on abilify... My husband and I were always against medicating her, just because of her age... But things got so bad we feel like we have no choice and have accepted this as our reality. The abilify has made her worse. Her thoughts are telling her to do bad things now. She is expressing thoughts about wanting to harm herself, jump out of moving car, put thumb tacks in herself. She has also become germ phobic since starting this medication. She is constantly worrying that she will get sick if she touches something and even thought people in a restaurant were trying to poison her. She had also become super religious. She wanted me to cite the rosary with her, started wearing rosary beads because god was mad at her... It is the weekend. I called her psychiatrist's cell phone on Friday night after the car incident. He told me to wait the night and call him Saturday afternoon. Well Saturday afternoon I called and there was no answer. And no call back. I am furious. So I am no longer giving her her meds. But I guess now I need a new doctor too?? Any advice? Thoughts? This has been rough...

[lindahand]

I would make sure you are going to a pediatric psychiatrist even if you have to travel to do it (not a lot of them out there), and I would also ask for a brain scan if not already done to rule out any physical damage or brain tumor. Pediatric psychologists are more versed in what meds work on little bodies and appropriate doses.

The reaction may not happen with other medications, or maybe a different class of medications like a mood stabilizer like lamotrigine. Which is a lot less harsh on the system and doesn't have such long term effects, but is more for the ups and downs and won't help much with psychosis. If she has psychosis, probably going to end up on some sort of antipsychotic.

The drug companies are pushing Abilify for bipolar but it isn't always the answer. I take it, and it works wonderfully for me along with lamotrigine, but all of the other antipsychotics (all of them) gave me horrible side effects. I even started to lactate on risperadol. So unfortunately it is a process of trial and error. Sometimes a lot of error.

There is a web site called crazy meds (google and it is the first one to come up). It is run by people with mental illness and is a good resource for all things med related. I learned a lot going on that site and they are not into promotion of any one product. They redesigned the site and it isn't as good, they used to separate out all of the antipsychotics and now group them as one, but it is still the most unbiased information out there.

Another thing to watch is that if she is on the meds for any length of time, she'll need to taper down slowly. Abruptly stopping medication is risky and can even cause seizures. It sounds like she had just started so no biggy, but I thought I'd mention it.

[Amy4891]

The thing about medications is that they work differently for each person. It sometimes takes trying a few before you find the right one. I know that it is hard going through medications, but once you find the one that works well it is worth it.