Posted by HenryO on September 21, 2003, at 7:20:43
In reply to your opinions please...I'm new, posted by kharis on September 21, 2003, at 4:28:18
Trust your gut. 12 is pretty young. If the effect of the med is worse than the malady, what's the point. There are many different meds and they effect everyone differently. There are plenty of doctors with different opinions too. I'd ask around a bit.
To answer your question I have no idea about getting a lower dose of Straterra. But starting at a very low dose with any med is a really good idea, for anybody at any age.
I believe Straterra is mostly a stimulant. Ritalin comes in tablets which can easily be broken into tiny pieces. It is the classic ADD med. I like Ritalin for both my depression and ADD but I was hyper sensitive to it as a child and couldn't tolerate it. At least not the way it was administered then. I wish that it had been introduced to my system a mg at a time, just to find out. There are so many other meds these days. But the child brain is not the same as an adults. It is sort of scary to mess with. Yet my whole academic career would have been vastly different with the right med.
These moods swings, are they anger or depression? both or something else? How is his behavior? Are the mood swings causing social and school problems?
One thing that occurs to me, have you considered if this could be a variation of anxiety? Anxiety can be scary depressing distracting and difficult to articulate. It can even be hard sometimes to know that that is what's going on inside you.
I think that in my case as a kid it was the depression and fear which made it hard to concentate. When you hurt it's difficult to focus. As a kid I don't think I knew that I was in mental pain. I thought I was stupid, or just trying to be difficult like they said I was.
The pain masquerades as thought. Even today I have to deduce my moods by my behavior at times. It sounds weird but I often don't spot a mood swing for several days. It can take a bit of hindsight to realize I'm sliding into a funk. A Mom can see it immediately though. Your brain makes sense of what you feel even when what you feel doesn't make sense. Maybe something for his mood would be better than something for the ADD.
Lastly I'd like to emphisize that I have no medical training at all.
poster:HenryO
thread:262116
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030917/msgs/262139.html