Real fears about medication and autism

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Joined: 22 May 2012
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01 Apr 2013, 9:18 pm

My brother is about to start medication for anxiety and behavioural problems. this scares me because of the frightening side affects that most medication have. is it posible that the negative side affect of medication will slow my brothers social and emotional development and learning...what fear do you have about medication and your autistic child? Thank you...

whirlingmind
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01 Apr 2013, 9:25 pm

You might get more responses in the Parents section?

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goldfish21
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01 Apr 2013, 9:29 pm

It's possible but highly unlikely. The drugs are intended to help, not hinder. The thing with any antidepressant or anti-anxietal drug is that they'll each react differently in different people, and different again in combination with each other. You've got to try one and see what happens. Some work well, others not so well, and others yet you might react negatively to. That's why doctors will give a sample of one type to try for a few days, then try a different one for a few days etc to try and find one that works well for you. The science isn't exact enough to know which ones will work best for someone, so there's still a trial and error process to figure it out. If a drug he's taking is making him a zombie & it's not helping his life, then chances are he should talk to his doc about drying a different medication and they may be open to it if there are logical alternatives to try. It's in cases were people need to be sedated to prevent them from being violent or self harming that doctors would probably dismiss side effect complaints about feeling emotionless, as if it's controlling more serious symptoms then unless the side effects are pretty seriously life altering or life threatening, they'd likely want someone to continue taking whatever they prescribed them.

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briankelley
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01 Apr 2013, 9:32 pm

As a kid I was put on Ritalin which made me feel like a "zombie" as I put it, so they took me off that. As an adult my GP's had wanted me on Zoloft or similar for years. When I had a near psychotic episode of generalized anxiety, I agreed to go on Celexa. I had bad initial side effects such as stomach cramps and diarrhea. I was encouraged to ride it out and let the drug take effect. And eventually it did do the job. However... after my augmented anxiety was brought under control, the drug started causing disinhibition, where my standards of commonsense and caution went out the window . So I got off that stuff.

Anomiel
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02 Apr 2013, 12:02 am

blackcatz1 wrote:

Many autistic people get many of the side-effects listed and other stranger reactions by almost every kind of medication. That is not a reason to not take medications, just something to be aware of and prepared for. If they would show so severe side-effects you're afraid it would negatively impact their life, then you (ask your parents to) switch meds. Getting on anxiety-meds could slow learning if it is one of the kinds that affects the cognitive process like benzos do, but I doubt it would affect emotional development...? Don't know what medications you're talking about, you could probably get better answers if you stated which meds you're wondering about. If they would need to be sedated in a learning environment then you get them out of that school and to a place where they could learn and feel safe and clear-minded... Not enough importance is placed on fostering intelligence in today's autistic youth, all the importance is placed on being social and discouraging actually having interests and thus learning something. Being social, and trained to be social, takes up almost ALL OF THE BRAIN CPU if you're autistic so what we're going to see in 10 years are very stupid autistic adults.

Then there's the question of what purpose the meds have... Some people have very misguided reasons why they want their kid to be medicated and how they go about it. I think lessening anxiety is a very benign goal though.

http://www.childmind.org/en/posts/articles/2012-6-19-study-autism-medication-prompts-debate wrote:

While parents may not readily admit to it, the decision on medication to help reduce problematic behavior is often linked to the process of getting children accepted by a school. Parents may see medication making the difference between a child being placed a self-contained class of 12 special-needs kids that looks unfortunately like warehousing and a placement in a less-restrictive setting that includes mainstream children, where they may be exposed to more challenging academics and typically developing peer role models.

This notion angers former teacher and advocate Landon Bryce, who blogs at thAutcast. "I think if medication worked as well as doctors, parents and school administrators like to pretend it does, this would make a lot of sense," he says. "But it doesn't. You are talking about giving kids meds to make them more manageable. You are talking about making them stupider—I never taught a kid who did not feel that way about his med—in the hope of helping them learn more. That is stupid."

Dr. Elliott says that with younger children, under 5 or 6, he "absolutely pushes" for other types of behavioral interventions with the child and family first to address problem behaviors. But he acknowledges that society's expectations and a lack of resources can prevail over this approach. "School tells the family, 'We can't keep your child in this classroom because of his behavior, so why don't you try medication?'" he says. "There can be a real pressure to do it."

It's exactly this type of outside pressure that has Bryce up in arms. "I spent 20 years as a classroom teacher," he says. "I was consistently alarmed at the pressure parents are under to medicate their children and the pressure on kids to continue taking medication that they hate being on. I think medicated kids are easier to control. I think they are much harder to teach."

Last edited by Anomiel on 02 Apr 2013, 3:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Chloe33
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02 Apr 2013, 12:10 am

blackcatz1 wrote:

Without knowing what medications, it's hard to tell the specifics about side effects. Also everyone may react differently to medications.
Anti-depressants never worked for me, not SSRIs, not Celexa, Wellbutrin, Prozac etc.

Antianxiety (Klonopin specifically) works for me. Ativan didn't work well for me.

Sometimes it can be a process finding out what works and what does.

If your brother is on heavy antipsychs it may leave him physically exhausted. I've been on ones so bad i could barely get out of bed and function (Seroquel for example). That was on 50mg. Yet some people are walking around fine taking over 1000mgs which i never understood how...

Anomiel
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02 Apr 2013, 2:22 am

Chloe33 wrote:

Without knowing what medications, it's hard to tell the specifics about side effects. Also everyone may react differently to medications. [...]

Exactly.
Op, you should read up about what known side-effects there can be with those specific medications. There's lots of information available about most meds.

goldfish21
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02 Apr 2013, 2:27 am

Whereas I took an SSRI for a while that did work for me, Effexor XR. Every once in a while I would take a 5-HTP with it, too. Then started taking Dexedrine XR 2 1/2 years or so ago and reduced & then eliminated the Effexor XR and haven't taken 5-HTP for over a year, either.. but every once in a while I might benefit from it.

The worst reaction I ever had was to the one single pill of Paxil that I took once. (sample from my GP to see how it worked.) I had read about all of the side effects before taking it. It was the first anti-depressant pill I'd ever taken, I believe, and in hindsight I suppose it's a pretty good thing I didn't just say F this and never take another pill again after that experience... it was bad. Very bad. I had to keep reminding myself that it was only the effects of the Paxil that had put me into a horribly negative passively suicidal state w/ uncontrollable outbursts of crying. At least I had my wits about me enough to know that I just had to wait out a bad drug trip & I'd be a lot more right again. I was given a few day sample pack to try - I didn't take a second pill. F that drug. It may work for others, but it may as well have been a suicide pill for me.

Do not let that anecdote prevent you from trying meds prescribed by your doctor. Even after that experience I still tried other drugs, and some of them worked pretty darn good with very minimal side effects that lessened over time continuously taking them daily. Do learn something from it though - if you're trying a brand new drug, try to do it with someone else around who knows what you're doing just in case it does disagree with you and you need their assistance. You don't know what you don't know... and you don't know what a new drug might do to you, or how it might make you think or feel completely beyond your control. Be smart & safe about it, even with prescription drugs vs. recreational.

As for recreational, I use non-prescription THC and it treats a wide variety of ADHD/AS symptoms, including anxiety.

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