Intuniv Side Effects

[Anonymous]

What side effects did you child experience on Intuniv?

[Anonymous]

It made DS (14) very tired initially. He'd come home from school and want to nap for a couple hours. The dr. added Focalin XR which worked well to counteract the tiredness. After a couple months he found he wasn't tired anymore and dropped the Focalin. Otherwise, Intuniv has worked great for him.

[Anonymous]

I started another recent thread: we think it causes weepiness. Dealing with another issue right now so can’t do a trial of weaning off the intuniv yet to test this theory. He’s been on for four months. Is also on adderalll which he’s been on for two years.

[Anonymous]

We had tiredness and slightly increased appetite for the first week, but then it went away. After a few days though we switched the time of day that we gave it to him—when we gave it to him at night he would have crazy, crazy dreams and sleep disruptions, but once we switched to AM it was fine. It's been generally well-tolerated after that.

We tried to increase the dose at one point, and that caused him to be a little more irritable (with no added benefit), so we backed down to 1 mg.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I started another recent thread: we think it causes weepiness. Dealing with another issue right now so can’t do a trial of weaning off the intuniv yet to test this theory. He’s been on for four months. Is also on adderalll which he’s been on for two years.

Definitely caused weepiness for us. Also really easy bedtimes for the two weeks DS was on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I started another recent thread: we think it causes weepiness. Dealing with another issue right now so can’t do a trial of weaning off the intuniv yet to test this theory. He’s been on for four months. Is also on adderalll which he’s been on for two years.

Definitely caused weepiness for us. Also really easy bedtimes for the two weeks DS was on it.

I'm the PP you're responding to and agree - but the weepiness for two weeks might have dissipated had you kept with it for a couple months. At least, that's what I read. Our doctors said it's unusual to have weepiness as an ongoing side effect, but didn't dispute the possibility since it seemed to coincide pretty clearly with when DS started.

Also, totally agree with the bedtime thing. We went from 1-2 hours every night of being wide awake in bed and coming out 15 times, to being sleepy enough to stay in bed after tuck in and then falling asleep within 30 minutes. It's one of the reasons we're loathe to try reducing the dosage.

[Anonymous]

He says he has less energy, but the kid had so much excess energy that it was not a problem.

[Anonymous]

Very emotional and weepy when he was first put on it and when the dosage was increased but these side effects disappeared in about a week each time. DS says it is very helpful. DS is 11 and has ASD/ADHD, combined type.

He was on Focalin XR for 3 yrs but switched due to the Focalin XR causing anxiety.