Celexa for teen with AS--anyone have any experience with it?

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My aspie son, who is 14, has been prescribed Celexa for depression. When I took him in to the psychiatrist, he had been sad, unwilling to do any homework, and pretty irritable. I didn't think to ask the dr. about the drug, and she didn't tell me anything about it. Then when I went home, I read about it and noticed that some people gain weight on it and that it is not FDA approved for kids. So I decided to not give it to him, and now he is manifesting OCD symptoms. I went back to the clinic (this is Kaiser Permanente) to talk to a different shrink but he seemed angry to learn that I had taken it upon myself to nott give my son the meds. Any experience with this drug? My son is already 70-80 pounds overweight.

Yes, I am currently using those (in very small dose, like 20mg, was higher during depression, but still somewhat low dose for I have high response to depression med). Been out of depression for a while now, medication was stopped for a while, but psy restarted it for I had high trouble with anxiety and seem to help to limit it. For me that med got almost no side effect. But before I get that one quite a few other different one were tried, mostly stopped for too heavy side effect.

For side effect of depression med it is hard to tell, people react differently to different med, but a good psy should make you gradually do dose increase to the desired dose to help reduce the integration side effect (same thing for stopping the med to help with the purge side effect). But if side effect are heavy but sure to contact the psy for switch of med, for it mean it simply not the med adapted for the person. All depression med have weight gain in possible side effect, so just see if cause some then speak with pharmacist or psy.

For the not suggested to child thing, try to speak with the pharmacist for more info, sometime those are only there for young child for body size reason, thus requiring different dosage scale then adult.

Has for the psy did you explain him why you didn't want to take the med ? He should have gave you detail on those subject if you explained your fear. But for those kind of thing it always better to speak with pharmacist first, they tend to be more open to question and can give you has good info about med (just cannot prescribe), then depending on info he gave you decide if should be spoken to the psy for different treatment.

Celexa is not the strongest antidepressant on the market but it's weight gain potential isn't very great and it's not likely to make matters worse. It is worth a try.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I am nervous about giving my kid the meds, and the drs. I have dealt with recently re: my son do not seem interested in explaining anything to me. When I told this other guy I did some online research, he told me to get off the computer!!

I take it. It works wonderfully for me. I had no idea I could feel this well.

It has a very low side effect profile -- generally fewer and less severe side effects than any other AD, including the one that happens to be approved for children ("prozac"). It's a common first AD to try for most people, regardless of their age. Your son's pdoc didn't do anything hinky, is proceeding in a standard, common, cautious way.

Be aware that Celexa, like almost any AD is very likely to make him feel like crap for the first few weeks, while not working. It has to build up a bit to work. And the first side effects will usually go away. How well it works the first week may have squat to do with how well it works six weeks letter, when it's at full effect and the start-up side effects will have gone away.

I'm a teen. I take it. Works pretty well for anxiety. No side effects for me.

Some things you need to know, not to say you shouldn't try it, but so that you have your eyes fully open:

1) Studies continue to show that anti-depressants are no more effective than placebos. Yet, many many people feel they have made a huge difference. How much of that is a placebo effect is unknown. They real chemicals and do make real changes.

2) They are very difficult to get off of.

3) Some teens have had horrible reactions to anti-depressants, and there are some very scary stories out there about how various anti-depressants started a violent cycle.

You have a right to question the doctor and he should not pass off your concerns so quickly. He should be willing to engage in a conversation about the pro's and con's and what to watch for. Sure, the internet is full of misinformation, but it is also full of things your doctors should be telling you that they don't get around to. We all love the idea of miracles, but there are few in medicine. It is an art, and as such is highly individualistic, making intuition an incredibly valuable part of figuring out treatment.

That's what I'm talking about--you put it very well. I'm not used to doctors being so annoyed by patients who ask questions, but that seems to be commonplace in the Kaiser system here in northern California. Before our family had Kaiser, I had only one doctor who was so patronizing.

Plus, I guess I have issues with psychiatrists--I don't like the control they get to have over our personal lives.

False.

Well, for a given value of false. Some studies show this. However, the actual science used to produce these studies is, well, exactly what I would do if I wanted to produce a study that shows that ADs don't work.

OK. I'm not about to play "my study is better than yours" on this issue. I'll simply note that I based that statement on a Newsweek cover article from about 6 months ago. I presumed their reported researched it thoroughly and weighed the studies, but I do know even the best reporting can have inaccuracies. Still, anyone looking at these drugs needs to know that there is a good base of information implying that the placebo effect may be the real benefit.

My son was about your son's age when he was prescribed Celexa for depression/anxiety and OCD symptoms. He was on a very low dose and while it seemed as though it was starting to help ease his OCD issues, he also started to experience hallucinations. When we mentioned this to his therapist, he told us he didn't feel the hallucinations were connected to the Celexa, saying none of his other patients had ever reported this and that as far as he knew, this wasn't listed as a possible side effect. When the hallucinations persisted and got scarier for my son, we tapered him down and stopped giving it to him. The hallucinations began maybe 1 1/2 - 2 weeks from the time he started taking it and stopped as soon as the Celexa was out of his system. He had the same reaction with Luvox. We decided to keep him off meds and he hasn't had any hallucinations since. I'm not against meds necessarily but I am posting to let you know what my son experienced just in case your son has the same side effect.

Yeah. There was one study that was repeatedly in the news for a while. The researchers didn't do any experiment, they aggregated results from a number of other studies of ADs. One study they used was about a drug which was proven to not work, another was about a drug that proved to work well only when used in concert with another drug and does not work well on its own, and a number of the others were about drugs that are usually reserved for treatment-resistant depression. When you do an research-aggregation type study and choose to aggregate results from a study that shows the drug doesn't work, a study that shows that the drug doesn't work when used in the way that was being studied, and a handful of studies using subjects who have proven themselves unusually hard to treat, well, the 'No better than placebo!" result is to be expected.

Not that ADs have a high rate of effectiveness anyway. Some of these drugs work well for some people and some don't. Many people need to fish around and adjust meds and doses to find what works. A study that says "This drug, at this dose, is no more effective than placebo," can be a perfectly well-designed piece of research but is still not a good reason not to try that medication if you need it, because it might work very very well for the person in question at a different dose. And it is not a good reason to throw out all antidepressants, because a different med, even one that is chemically very similar, may work very very well when the first one tried doesn't work at all.

I don't want to give you a hard time, but seriously, my functioning level and personal well-being is so dramatically improved by Celexa that I cringe to think that someone might dismiss its potential value, and I regret the years of my life I spent without it. I beat the odds in easily finding a med that works well for me and doesn't give me pain in the arse side-effects, but the fact that the odds were against me was a very bad reason not to try earlier.

Edited to add: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/home/co ... 68/1520550