best med for child with ocd, depression and possibly aspergers?

[goldilocks37]

Does anyone know of a website as valuable as this one where i could get some advice on medications for a child (my son, age 7) diagnosed with ocd, mild depression and either aspergers or bi-polar? It would be very useful to hear from other parents as well as doctors on which meds, discipline styles, incentives, activites are most effective. Currently he takes depokote which helps with the ocd but not the depression. Depokote combined with an SSRI makes him completely manic. We have a doctors appt coming up and it would be great if I knew what med to ask for. Any suggestions?

 

[LuxEtVeritas]

i would look further into getting a firmer evaluation of what he has if indeed he may have Aspberger's...

 

[johanneschimpo]

Please exhaust all of your other options before heavily medicating a 7 year old child. Its quite a shame to see what can happen. My best friend's younger brother was heavily medicated from a young age for problems which were either not actually there or were too minor to medicate for. Long story short, now at the age of 13 or so he's totally fucked in the head; the meds he didn't need did a number on him and now he truly is mentally deficient. Of course, its your child, so I can't tell you what to do, but like Lux said, get him evaluated by more, different doctors before jumping to any decisions which will affect his mental health and thus, his future.

 

[goldilocks37]

i understand where you are coming from and if i was looking at it from the outside as you are I would say the same thing. I have had him evaluated by several doctors. i also flew him outstate to a clinic that does SPECT Imaging which looks at what areas of the brain the blood flows to under different circumstances. He deserves to be happy too. I strongly believe (I know) that the medication is helping.

 

[nuke]

Unless your kid is stringing themselves or someone else up, I would wait until they're older to administer drugs that would affect (probably permanently) the development of his/her CNS. And also to try alternative treatments first, eg, large doses of omega-3 fatty acids and exercise.

I've had a lot of friends absolutely messed up from receiving psychiatric medications around the ages of 5+.

Here's an interesting news article on the issue:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-03-23-drugged-to-death_N.htm

 

[goldilocks37]

I have tried fish oil, 3 different kinds along with a cherry flavored one for kids which caused him to throw up. He refuses to take it now. For us, if he wasn't on medication he couldn't continue to live in our house and grow up with his siblings. I just can't go back to that. If we do we'll almost certainly be on the 6:00 news. You have no idea how terrible and completely debilitating his ocd was, not just for him but for his parents and siblings as well. You have no idea

 

[nuke]

Have you tried inositol?

You may wish to try low doses of DXM, as it's safe in children and NMDA antagonists (like memantine) may help with OCD. You may also wish to try famotidine with this, as H2 is positively correlated to OCD symptoms and famotidine is an OTC H2 antagonist. Diphenhydramine is OTC as well, and is an H1 inverse agonist and mild SSRI (similar to clomipramine but less efficacious at SERT, your doctor may head for this next). If nothing else, diphenhydramine would have a sedating effect.

All the above have been previously evaluated in children and for the most part have been established as safe. Those're just for OCD (there's a good possibility DXM would help with BPD, though); I don't know if clearing that up much would help with the other symptoms/disorders.

That's on the medicated route; cognitive-behavioural therapy is also supposed to be an effective way to treat OCD or BPD.

 

[LuxEtVeritas]

i am not sure the competence of your MD but IMO most are suck ass to be simply blunt

i really feel for your situation as it is very hard and trying in so many ways and you may well need to also seek out and really hunt for a truly open-minded, highly intelligent MD if this one is not cutting it

though as i have seen it is a bit of a needle in a haystack as at best 5% are IMO worthy of practicing

best of luck