New psychiatrist recommending Lamictal for 9 year old

[Anonymous]

My DS isn't taking Lamictal, but is taking a similar mood stabilizer (Trimectal). We did the GeneSight testing which identified that DS does not have 2 of the 3 genes associated with SJS (the 3rd gene isn't tested for with GeneSight). GeneSight was $330 out of pocket after insurance.

From my research, Lamictal has a very favorable risk profile and doesn't require the level of monitoring that some of the other drugs people have mentioned require. Many of the ones that other people have mentioned are atypical antipsychotics which carry the risk of metabolic side effects.

My DS's profile is pretty similar to your except he does ramp up to physically threatening or harming himself or threatening others. I wouldn't say it was an overnight cure with DS and he still gets out of control occasionally but others who interact with him regularly have noticed that things like making a mistake that would have upset him before don't really phase him now. The number of incidents at school have been cut by more than half and the severity of the incidents have dropped dramatically.

[Anonymous]

12:47 again

I'd like to mention in the "add and then wean of Zoloft" camp, that if your DS is anything like mine, the negatives of stopping something that is helping even a little bit can be big. Once my DS has a negative experience with a person, place, or thing, he fixates on it and it can take a lot of effort to get him to give it another try and then a lot of repeated successes to then outweigh the negative experience. Something like this resulted in DS's behavior ruining some budding friendships and a lot of acting out to avoid going to one special at school.

Unfortunately, these are really tough decisions with no guidebook and we can only really know if it's a good decision or a bad decision in retrospect.