ADHD medicine, stemming, anxiety
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| Sat, 10-07-2006 - 7:54am |
I thought I would share something with all of you that I have recently learned. My son was on Adderall XR for the last year. He stemms really bad, twisting his hair until we have sores or bald spots. He also has anxiety on or off the medicine. Anyway our Dev. Ped told us tot ake him off the medicine for a month because she isn't convinced he has ADHD and we were told to monitor his stemming and behavior. Let me tell you, his behavior, attention and focus were absolutely awful! However, he stopped twisting his hair, he did mild stemming like chewing pencils or fiddling with things. Anyway, being off his medicine made it impossible for him to complete his classword and behave. On Thrusday we put him back on the medcine. He came home with twisted, knotted hair. In one day of this medicine he began stemming profusely.
I went online and started looking at the different ADHD medcines and found out that Adderall (and Concerta) are not suppose to be prescribed to children with anxiety. Stratteria is actually geared toward people with anxiety. None of this I knew. So, I have made an appt with his Dr to discuss chaning his medicine. Also, my son is extremely thin and can't gain weight. From what I read about Stratteria the loss of appetite is just in the beginning not continual like Adderall.
Just thought I would share this with everyone.
Melissa

That happened with Mike in the extreme which is why I don't put him on ADHD meds anymore. It happened with concerta, ritalin and to a lesser extent, dexadrine. He became a horribly withdrawn, obsessive, anxietal, meltdown mess. All be it one with great focusing.
Ya know, now Mike focuses pretty well if he is well regulated, understands what is expected and has a routine. He can sit for over an hour on homework with headphones. His isn't ADHD. It is SID and ASD and all that goes with that.
However, I did recently hear that focalin works really really well. Friends ASD son is using it and doing fantastic.
You may also want to get a OT eval and sensory diet for him.
Renee
ps, Mike was in the med study for strattera just before it was FDA approved because we were so desperate for a med that would work for his ADHD (which is what we thought he had then). Didn't do a whole lot for him and he was on it for 9 months and saw a psychiatrist weekly to follow and adjust the meds. We had 1 really good week on the med and that was when he wasn't in school.
It was the psychiatrist in that study who finally convinced me that Mike was ASD. I will never forget, Mike was behaving quite autistic and I remember telling the doc my *usual* response that Mike had a very hard time with strangers and doctors and wasn't like this normally. (DENIAL). The doc very sarcastically said "Stranger induced autism, there is a new one on me. You should do a study". A couple weeks later he recomended I have him re-evaluated.
Renee
Liam has been on adderal xr for almost a month now and we do see a huge difference.
Rina
Hey Melissa ~
Could you please send me the link to where you got that info.? We're on the med merry go round with Noah and had the EXACT same problem with Adderal ER (huge bald spots). He's now on Concerta, but we're not happy with it. Concerta "dies" after exactly 12 hours. It's horrible. He goes from being a sweet, helpful little boy to Mr. Obnoxious in two seconds flat.
His doc gave us a Rx for a tiny dose of Ritalin to hopefully take the edge of the time between when the Concerta dies and bedtime.
I wasn't at the appt., but DH said she spoke positively of the Focalin also.
Amy
The stemming we found out when we took him off the medicine for 30 days and then put him back on. The stemming started the same day he went back on Adderall.
This is the link that says Adderall shouldn't be taken if the child has anxiety- in which alot of kids on the autism scale have
http://www.adderallxr.com/about_adderallxr/about-sideeffects.asp
Here is the concerta info about not taking if anxiety
http://www.concerta.net/active/mccus/en_US/html/concerta/utilities/important_product_information.pdf#zoom=100
And this tells you about stattera benefits for children with anxiety
http://www.strattera.com/1_1_about_strattera/1_1_about.jsp
Melissa,
Yep. I agree.
I take Adderall XR and my shrink said that Adderall -all stims in fact; are
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