Too many autistics are bieng prescribed too many drugs

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Clinicians are particularly concerned about children with the condition because psychiatric medications can have long-lasting effects on their developing brains, and yet are rarely tested in children.

In general, polypharmacy — most often defined as taking more than one prescription medication at once — is commonplace in people with autism. In one study of more than 33,000 people under age 21 with the condition, at least 35 percent had taken two psychotropic medications simultaneously; 15 percent had taken three.

Data are scant in both populations, but what little information there is suggests multiple prescriptions are even more common among adults with autism than in children.

“Psychotropic medications are used pretty extensively in people with autism because there aren’t a lot of treatments available,” says Lisa Croen, director of the Autism Research Program at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California. “Is heavy drug use bad? That’s the question. We don’t know; it hasn’t been studied.”

Sometimes, as in Connor’s case, a second drug is prescribed to treat the side effects of the first. More often, doctors prescribe drugs for each individual symptom — stimulants for focus, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) for depression, antipsychotics for aggression and so on. (Children with autism who have epilepsy also typically take anticonvulsants. But because those drugs are effective and easy to assess, they’re usually not seen as part of the polypharmacy problem.)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only two drugs for children and adolescents with autism: risperidone and aripiprazole (Abilify), both atypical antipsychotics prescribed for behaviors associated with irritability, such as aggression, tantrums and self-harm. The drugs help ease these behaviors about 30 to 50 percent of the time, but leave others untouched. And that’s a major gap: Psychiatric problems are common in children with autism. According to a 2010 study, more than 80 percent of children with autism at a psychiatric healthcare center also had ADHD, 61 percent had at least two anxiety disorders, and 56 percent had major depression.

Multiple diagnoses lead to drug cocktails, but no clinical trials have tested combinations of the most commonly used medications, so potential drug-drug interactions are unknown. “Every drug has side effects, and when you start to mix them together you’re looking at something that’s not been studied,” King says. “And in autism, where you might have communication impairments, it’s even more worrisome because people are less likely to be able to tell you that your medicines are making them feel sick.”

Beyond that, say researchers, is the fact that the medicines may not even work.

“Many studies have looked at the use of ADHD meds to treat ADHD symptoms in people with autism. The same can be said for obsessive-compulsive disorder and repetitive behaviors,” says Daniel Coury, a developmental pediatrician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “And with virtually all of these, we find that they don’t work as well as they do in people who don’t have autism.”

One 2013 meta-analysis concluded that most studies of psychiatric drugs for autism features are either too small or don’t have the right design to determine whether the drugs are effective. The research that does exist, the researchers wrote in that study, “is only suggestive, and awaits true assessment in properly controlled studies.”

It's also why the nation has a big narcotic and heroin problem that's getting out of hand.

True. I blame oxycontin. I am studying medical transcription editing and to practice we use decade old medical reports that have personal information redacted, and I have come across prescription lists with huge doses of several kinds of oxycondone. There is no way those patients could have not become addicted at those levels.

I understand that doctor's are a little more hesitant to prescribe narcotic pain killers to patient's these days, because of the high chance that it will lead to illegal use of opiates. I accidently tried an opiate once, and I can see why people become addicted to it. I have deliberately avoided narcotics because of this and even avoid taking them for my back pain.

As with everything, a balance needs to be kept.

I don't if this is too much medicine. But this is what I take every day of the week. In the morning I take 2 generic brand ProZac pills for my ocd. And Guanfacine and Focalin XR tablet for my ADHD. And in the evening I take another Guanfacine pill and a regular Focalin pill. Is that a lot or pretty normal?

Doesn't sound like a lot to me.

Does the Prozac work for your OCD?

Yes and that's why I take. I heard that it's also can be taken for depression but I honestly don't have depression.

I took Prozac for depression for years. I didn't work well for that for me, but I did have OCD which cleared up.

...The overprescribing problem is not just an autistics problem but a general one. All the emphasis on vaccines deflects from the real damage big pharma is doing....

If everyone was just using antidepressants and antipsychotics, I wouldn't see a problem with that - those are not addictive.

...Fast forward to a few months ago and my physician recommended generic gabapentin. I stopped using it except in extreme cases because it had side effects that I didn't like.

Ummm,yes they are addictive.