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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Mine is 16 and we finally stopped the meds after 8 years. We did:

Focalin 
Ritalin 
Metadate 
Straterra 
Vyvanse 
Jornay 
Concerta 
Guanfacine

Nothing seems to have done a thing really. She’s pretty inattentive and has had periods of a lot of dysregulation.  We also did Zoloft, Abilify, and Effexor. She gained 60 pounds in 4 years of experimenting with those.

She’s now obese, off of everything, pretty regulated and doing fairly well in school. We are about a month off of everything.[/quote]

I thought stimulants decreased weight? [/quote]

I think it was the SSRI that initially caused the weight gain, and her her the stimulants did not act as an appetite suppressant for her. Now she’s on nothing but Guanfacine and still gaining weight. So I don’t know.[/quote]

Guanfacine causes weight gain [/quote]

That's what I've read here! But the doctor's INSIST that it doesn't. She has really bad eating habits and is very sedentary too, so it's so hard to tease this all out. All I know is she's gained 60+ pounds in the last 4 years, and that's when we increased the SSRI's and she's been on meds since. [/quote]

I was 120 before SSRIs and gained 20-30 lbs on them. Effexor made me the fattest but all of them caused significant weight gain and carb cravings. I tried 8 kinds.  My psychiatrist insisted this was the opposite of what the literature said and that if anything they’d cause weight gain. After going off Effexor (took 1 year) I lost 25 pounds easily with diet and exercise - and I finally had energy to exercise because the meds made me exhausted and sleep 12 hours. Medication is not a panacea. [/quote]

My DD was 125 before SSRIs (and stimulants, and Guanfacine) and is now 185. She’s been off of everything for a couple of months now and still seems to be gaining weight. But she’s 16 and feels the world is fat phobic (although I can tell she does not feel good about how she looks and feels), and she continues to eat a lot of carbs and sugar. So I don’t think the weight is going to come off.[/quote]

PP here. It took me a year of dedicated effort to lose the extra pounds and retrain my taste buds from eating junk. The meds stayed in my system for a while and I was sedentary and used to that lifestyle and completely de conditioned. I was also exhausted all the time. Any medication that causes that amount of weight gain is likely going to do more harm than good. I was even more depressed on SSRIs than not because I was so fat, I looked awful, felt awful, etc. It crushed my self-confidence and killed my social/romantic life. It’s going to take time to undo the damage. I would stop chasing meds if she’s having such significant side effects. [/quote]

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