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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Multiple antipsychotics, multiple SSRIs, and multiple stimulants? That's way too much and very unusual, although one from each category isn't unusual at all.

Who is prescribing all these meds?

We accidentally got to start over again when DC went to a week long camp where she was expected to self administer, and she forgot. We were very lucky that nothing bad happened. We added one med back at a time, beginning with abilify because we needed something for mood urgently and it's faster than an SSRI. She's now on one of each of the above categories and doing great.[/quote]

Our skilled psychiatrist is prescribing and it all happened after an unusually bad reaction to a bad the first few SSRIs we tried. Our child became overstimulated (which is apparently rare and potentially indicative of underlying mental health struggles like bipolar that may manifest later) and was in a constant state of fight or flight. It was scary. I didn’t want to do the mood stabilizers but we had no other choice. Then we were able to find an SSRI that works but we can’t go off the mood stabilizers because psychiatrist is afraid they’ll get overstimulated again. We tried to switch from Abilify to lamotrigine but DC got suicidal when we reduced Abilify. So here we are on both of those mood stabilizers as well as an SSRI and a stimulant. It’s too much. I hate it. They’re not suicidal, but they’ve gained so much weight and they have no energy and their blood sugar is elevated. I don’t know how to get out of this situation. Obviously I don’t want them to be suicidal, but neither do I want them to be obese (not exaggerating, they crossed that threshold a while back) and struggling to make it through a school day because of fatigue. There are no good choices. Continuing as we are will wreck their physical health. Changing meds will make them suicidal. We are very very stuck. [/quote]

Is overactivation uncommon? When we first tried SSRIs, we had the same experience. No one was concerned that it was a sign of anything more serious (or suggested it was unusual). We used a SNRI for several years, then post puberty successfully transitioned to a SSRI.

If you added the lamotrogine in order to go off the abilify but ended up not going off the abilify, weaning off the lamotrogine seems like it would be a good first step.

When abilify caused too much weight gain/high cholesterol, we successfully transitioned to Latuda, then weaned off the abilify. The switch took about a month.[/quote]

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