Abilify Minimum Dosage

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Hello All,

We will talk to the Dr before we actually make any change to the dosage. But thinking this is the place to discuss to one's content so posting here for fellow parents thoughts/comments. Google/Bing did not help,

We have a teenager (14 yrs) who was given Abilify 2mg (minimum available size) per day to help with his agitation. The medication has helped him to some extent, but with one side affect. The kid is eating a lot and has gained a lot of weight within two months.

It is said Abilify has a half life of about 3 days. So mathematically about 19% of medication goes out of your system each day and 81% is still there. [one third power of .5 is about .81]. So if I do a simple Excel calculation then it seems after a few weeks it builds up to about 10mg in the system.

Now if we want to reduce the dosage and give 2mg only 4 days in a week, that will mean eventually it would build up to 5.7mg in the system. Is this dosage so low that it is just wastage of the medicine and it won’t have any effect? Or it is worth trying. Please comment.

TIA, Raky

That stuff gets tricky. Have you discussed this medication change with his doctor? There may be other options out there that are a better fit.

You need to get a doctor's advice on this but I can give my schizophrenic wife's experience with this. I think she was on 10mg abilify and seemed initially to go really well with it, although a little high and spaced out. She started losing all the extra weight she had put on with zyprexa, so abilify is not nearly as bad as zyprexa for weight gain. (But she had a really bad psychotic breakdown when on abilify and has seemingly deteriorated some from there, so it is a lower grade antipsychotic, although I appreciate this is irrelevant to you but the weight comment may be of a little use).

I think side effects for these meds vary per the individual. My DS was on Abilify for 3 years and gained 80 lbs. he was on low dosages varying between 1-5 mg, always looking for the minimum dosage with most benefit.

I don't think the half life really works as you are describing but I'm not the one to provide a formula. That said, we could see when it was time for the next dose, at around 24 hours. Btw - Abilify was a bugger to get off because of that half life. We weaned very very gradually, going down 1/2 mg every two weeks. When we did it quicker, DS always suffered Ill effects and he had to go back on. The time we took a full 3 months to wean off, has been successful and he has been off since August.

We broke the tablets and took them daily until he was on .5 mg per day, took that faily for two weeks then took .5 every other day then nothing.

good luck!

OH MY - I absolutely agree to talk with the Dr. before starting or stopping any medication. That said, my Dr. recommended a much more rapid withdrawl, and we had failed with that in the past, so I chose to move more slowly. This seemed really helpful.

With respect to the weight, it did not come off immediately but started to come off at about 5 months off meds. Abilify absolutely increased his appetite, no doubt about it.

My son has been on a 1.5 mg dosage of abilify for over a year and i am slowly reducing it. Now he takes pretty much a speckle of it and I want to take him all the way off. Would anyone recommend giving it to him every other day for a week or two then every other 3 days etc so that he is finally of it completely?
Thanks

I have been weaning my son off Abilify for over 3 months. For the past month he has been having a pseckle a day. Now he has been off it for 5 days, and I can see slight more agitation. Does anyone have experience with this that they can describe their process?
I really want to ride this through

My 12 year old son was on low dosage of Abilify between 2-5 mg for 4 years. (2 mg per day for past two years)

Now that he is older and doing much better with his anxiety level, we were told by his Dr ok to start weaning off. First try to wean him off by cutting in half and doing 1 mg per day for two weeks and then stop taking it altogether after only two weeks; however, he was very anxious and agitated after that process and ended up putting back on 2 mg per day for 6 months.

Abilify was VERY DIFFICULT to get off because of that half life thing. After the 6 months, we then weaned off very very gradually, going down 1/2 mg every four weeks. This time we took a full 3 months to wean off, has been successful and he has been off of it. MUST GRADUALLY COME OFF OF ABILIFY. 1/2 mg every 4 weeks or so decrease. No more than that

We did a summer break and did not return to it. Just two mg made my 11yr old gain around 40 pounds in a year.