Meds Drive Autistic Boy Over the Edge into Insanity

Post Reply New Topic

Psych meds drove my son crazy

At 17, my son was a funny, odd autistic boy. But a misdiagnosis turned him into a violent, unpredictable man, and drove our family to the brink.

By Ann Bauer
Pages 1 2 3
Print Email Digg it Del.icio.us My Yahoo RSS Font: S / S+ / S++




May 18, 2007 | This is a story with a hopeful ending. Lucky, even. But be forewarned, you have to get through a lot of hopeless, unlucky crap before you find it.

Here's how it all starts: My first-born son has autism.

Now that isn't hopeless or, in my opinion, unlucky. Autism isn't sick or crazy. It's rigid and routine, a little eccentric. Autism is multiplying columns of numbers easily while being unable to look anyone in the eyes; listening to only one band's music, and always in the same order, for a period of six weeks; refusing to eat anything orange. It's also being able to remember the exact date and time you ate a bison burger in Chamberlain, S.D., when you were 6. But there's a really charming side to all this, a wonderful tilted perspective on life that, if you're a parent of autism, you come quickly to enjoy.

I was a parent like this.

Until he was 17, my son was unique and funny and odd. He was difficult in some ways but incredibly easy in others. He washed the family's dishes precisely, went to bed at exactly the same time each night, and sorted our mail into careful piles. He did fairly well in school -- above average in math, a little below in social studies -- and spent his weekends playing tournament-level chess. He was a loner, but sweet and articulate and very close to his only brother.

Then junior year came. He met a girl, he went to a dance, he thought life was better. And for a night it was. Then the dance ended, the girl decided she was interested in someone else, and the boy became depressed.

Was this cause for alarm? I thought not. Teenage boys routinely get depressed over girls and fickle friends and school dances. It was painful, but I assumed it would blow over. When it didn't, after six months, I took him to a psychologist who recommended a psychiatrist who put him on a newfangled antidepressant she said would have the added benefit of controlling some of his obsessive tendencies, like stacking the dishes and sorting the mail.

I didn't want to control those things -- to me, these weren't symptoms, they were characteristics of my son. And I'd fought for 17 years to keep him drug-free. But the psychiatrist and the psychologist and several family members insisted: He'd become unhappy, his routines were getting in the way of his developing a social life. This pill, they said, would help him.

Instead, he gained 30 pounds and began to lose his mind.

It happened slowly, over a period of months. First his grades began to fall. There were some random episodes of violence -- nothing major, just an out-of-control moment here or there. A tendency to stand up from the dinner table, after a full meal, and walk to Arby's for a snack. Eerie giggles that seemed involuntary. A flat expression on his once-curious face.

Senior year, he started an after-school job at an auto parts factory but lost it when he couldn't keep up with even the elderly workers. He stopped speaking to his brother entirely and even hit him several times. He lost interest in music, computers and chess.

I talked all this over with his father, my ex-husband, who said, "Maybe he needs a man's attention. Let me give it a try."

So our now 18-year-old, autistic, depressed and quickly losing ground, moved across town, to live with his father in a small, quiet apartment. My ex worked odd shifts, so our son began wandering the city on foot, early in the morning and late into the night. He told his dad about how he had to fight the bad thoughts that were crowding in his head. And when he wasn't out walking, he slept a lot -- around two-thirds of his life, in fact -- despite the fact that he drank 12 to 15 cups of coffee a day.

Together, my ex-husband and I took our son to a highly respected neuropsychology clinic housed in a suburban office building. The doctors there even looked like bankers; they wore regular clothes and carried clipboards and fancy pens embossed with the names of drug companies, rather than stethoscopes.


After meeting our son twice, they conferred with the original psychiatrist (who, we discovered later, was employed by the same large healthcare conglomerate) and came up with an altogether new diagnosis. This wasn't autism at all, they told us, but "psychomotor slowing" -- a form of schizophrenia. Our son was just unlucky, they said sadly, the victim of two devastating neuro-behavioral disorders. Completely unrelated.

It was critical that we begin treating him immediately; they couldn't stress this strongly enough. We were given a prescription for a brand-new antipsychotic medication with the inspiring name Abilify that was direct-to-consumer advertised in Newsweek and Time magazine. It featured a woman gazing into an azure sky and copy promising the drug would work on the brain "like a thermostat to restore balance."

We were skeptical. But the experts were firm: He would continue to deteriorate if we didn't catch this now. Did we want our son to end up institutionalized? In jail? Sick to our stomachs and desperate, we gave him the drugs. Then he got much, much worse.

He stayed with me on weekends, and twice during the workweek he would come to my house for dinner. We would sit at the table -- my husband (his stepfather), his brother and sister and I -- but my once-reserved older son would only stand over us acting crazy. Humming, shifting foot to foot, screaming if anyone touched him or tried to move him to the side. Often, he would talk back to the people who were speaking to him inside his head, telling him to do things. He would not, however, say a word to us.

He wasn't eating meals. But he was eating -- constantly. After graduating from high school, during the period when he was still holding the voices at bay, he'd started a government job through a disability work program. I'd given him a car and helped him open a checking account during this period of lucidity. Now, he began stopping at fast food restaurants on his way home from work to consume nachos, burgers, brownies and lattes. He ate with his hands and wiped them on his clothes, which he'd quit washing. He stopped bathing altogether.

We discontinued the Abilify, tapering it off as directed. Two days after taking the final pill, he got out of bed at 2 p.m. and stood in one place for a solid hour. My husband had taken our daughter roller-skating; our younger son was at work. It was just me, alone with this 6-foot-3-inch man I'd given birth to but no longer knew. I put my hand on his back and tried to push him forward, toward his shoes. And he turned to look at me -- his eyes empty and cold -- then grabbed me by both arms and beat me until the neighbors heard me screaming and called 911.


continued - http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/0 ... =whitelist

autistic catatonia? New one on me...

Sure. You dose a kid with antipsychotics what else could be expected? A miracle CURE?
More info - http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/177/2/180

Chicken or the egg; he was "deteriorating" since the dance, and it's common for individuals with autism to "regress" in early adulthood.

There's many, many possible reasons; people are quick to remove emotional upset from the equation for they only see it from their "normal" eyes; rejection from people in a social setting can make one with autism spiral downwards, especially for those who have difficulty with their emotions.

When someone diagnosed with Autism starts deteriorating mentally after ingestion of toxic medications to the point where they are catatonic, do not bathe and are on the brink of suicide, where that behavior was NOT in existance BEFORE admistration of the pharmaceuticals, one does need to be a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together and understand that the culprit is the medication. How many catatonic ASPIES do you know?

lawsuit time!! !

See what I said, he was clearly deteriorating prior to such; chicken or egg. It could have been the medication, or it could have been the schizophrenia he was recently diagnosed with that the medication tried to treat; one could say he may have been worst without said medication. However, said antipsychotic may have induced neuroleptic malignant syndrome, which can happen (I haven't read the entire article).

I know myself, I have bouts of catatonia. I'm not on an antipsychotic.

Catatonia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catatonia is a syndrome of psychic and motoric disturbances. In the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV) it is not recognized as a separate disorder, but is associated with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia (catatonic type), bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental disorders, as well as drug abuse and/or overdose. It may also be seen in many medical disorders including infections (such as encephalitis), autoimmune disorders, focal neurologic lesions (including strokes), metabolic disturbances and abrupt or overly rapid withdrawal from benzodiazepines.[1] It can be an adverse reaction to prescribed medication. It bears similarity to conditions such as encephalitis lethargica and neuroleptic malignant syndrome. There are a variety of treatments available, and depending on the case, one or more drugs may be used, including antipsychotics and benzodiazepines.
Clinical features
Patients with catatonia may experience an extreme loss of motor ability or constant hyperactive motor activity. Catatonic patients will sometimes hold rigid poses for hours and will ignore any external stimuli. Patients with catatonic excitement can die of exhaustion if not treated. Patients may also show stereotyped, repetitive movements. They may show specific types of movement known as "waxy flexibility" in which they maintain positions after being placed in them by someone else, or gegenhalten (lit. "counterhold"), in which they resist movement in proportion to the force applied by the examiner. They may repeat meaningless phrases or speak only to repeat what the examiner says.

While catatonia is only identified as a form of schizophrenia in present psychiatric classifications, it is increasingly recognized as a syndrome with many faces. It appears as the Kahlbaum syndrome (ret*d catatonia), malignant catatonia (neuroleptic malignant syndrome, toxic serotonin syndrome), and excited forms (delirious mania, catatonic excitement, oneirophrenia). [Fink M, Taylor MA: CATATONIA: A Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment, Cambridge U Press, 2003]. It has also been recognized as grafted on to autistic spectrum disorders. [Dhossche D et al: Catatonia in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2006]


Diagnostic criteria
According to the DSM-IV, the "With catatonic features" specifier can be applied if the clinical picture is dominated by at least two of the following:

motor immobility as evidenced by catalepsy (including waxy flexibility) or stupor;
excessive motor activity (purposeless, not influenced by external stimuli);
extreme negativism (motiveless resistance to all instructions or maintenance of a rigid posture against attempts to be moved) or mutism;
peculiarities of voluntary movement as evidenced by posturing, stereotyped movements, prominent mannerisms, or prominent grimacing
echolalia or echopraxia.

Subtypes
Stupor is a motionless, apathetic state in which one is oblivious or does not react to external stimuli. Motor activity is nearly non-existent. Individuals in this state make little or no eye contact with others and may be mute and rigid. One might remain in one position for a long period of time, and then go directly to another position immediately after the first position.

Catatonic excitement is a state of constant purposeless agitation and excitation. Individuals in this state are extremely hyperactive although the activity seems to lack purpose.

A catatonia rating scale has been developed to identify the syndrome. [Fink M, Taylor MA: CATATONIA . . .]. The diagnosis is verified by a benzodiazepine or barbiturate test. The diagnosis is validated by the quick response to either benzodizepines or ECT.


Treatment
Initial treatment is aimed at providing relief from the catatonic state. Benzodiazepines are the first line of treatment, and high doses are often required. A test dose of 1-2 mg intramuscular lorazepam will often result in marked improvement within half an hour. In France, zolpidem has also been used in diagnosis and response may occur within the same time period. Ultimately the underlying cause needs to be treated.

Electroconvulsive therapy is an effective treatment for catatonia as well as for most of the underlying causes (e.g. psychosis, mania, depression). Antipsychotics should be used with care as they can worsen catatonia and are the cause of neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a dangerous condition that can mimic catatonia and requires the immediate discontinuation of the antipsychotic.


[edit] References
^ Rosebush PI; Mazurek MF. (Aug 1996). "Catatonia after benzodiazepine withdrawal.". Journal of clinical psychopharmacology. 16 (4): 315-9. PMID 883570.
Caroff, Stanley N, MD (Editor); Mann, Stephen C (Editor); Francis, Andrew (Editor); Fricchioni, Gregory L, MD (Editor);Catatonia: From Psychopathology to Neurobiology; American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. 2004

Fink M., Taylor MA. Catatonia: A Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Dhossche DM, Wing L, Ohta M, Neumärker, K-J (Editors): Catatonia in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Amsterdam: Elsevier, Int Rev Biol 72; 2006.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatonia"
Categories: Mental illness diagnosis by DSM and ICD | Schizophrenia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatonia

Could you post the rest of the story so that we don't each have to pay $29 to read it.

Dude - 2 things

1 - I am not aware that this story is costing anyone. Last time I checked it was a freebie.

2 - From what I am observing here, if one opts to post a whole epic of a story it gets CUT DOWN by snip happy mods who are eager beavers to do their job PROPERLY. So - just show me where it says you got to pay and I'll find a way to get you the info via links so as not to anger the MODS that be.

jjstar,

lau brought up the copyright infringement statement in the ToS yesterday and I agreed with him that we should probably start asking people not to reproduce whole articles (this was the standard expectation at the last board I was at). However, later in the day Alex let us know that he isn't concerned about this problem unless the copyright holder complains.

(And it never had anything to do with anger. Why so quick to assume injustice instead of good intentions?)

At ease.

Well, whew to that Though I still am not clear why you moved the thread on NUTRITION THAT WOULD SAVE LIVES to the back dungeon of PPR while other threads that have zippy doo da to do with autism are freely floating in ambience with nary a care in the world - are on GENERAL.

Re the copyright - I never post anything that isn't CLEAR on copyright. I look, check and double check. Just for the record. I don't need more karma accrued. Heaven's to Betsy!

entire stories may be copied and pasted into posts... although should the holder complain following proper DMCA complaint filing portocol it has to be removed by a moderator... that simple... so you guys are not in violation until a DMCA complaint comes in

I read the section that was posted, and the basic symptoms and affect sounded like a mood disorder that wasn't treated properly. Mania often takes the form of violence. Using the WRONG drug can be like pouring gasoline on a campfire. Did I miss something or was the name of the "antidepressant" not mentioned? Some antidepressants, like some stimulants are dangerous with a mood disorder.

I'm sorry but the only drug I saw named was Abilify. That's an atypical antipsychotic, and it has allowed both my sons to control mood swings that led to horrifying violent outbursts at school. Now in their mid-teens, they're both doing well and the oldest has been mainstreamed back into the general school population. However, that was the drug we came to after literally dozens of other combo's did NOT work. If a medication is not producing the correct response, it needs to be changed. It took YEARS to get our kids the combo they needed to allow "normal" function.

It's both. A very close friend of mine (who is so close that she's also friends with pretty much the entire rest of my family, and we grew up knowing each other, so she's practically family herself) has talked fairly extensively to this family, about me, because I had a very similar experience in the psychiatric system. If this is the family I'm thinking of. She told me about them at a time that I was not able to write to them. But I know they know of me, because she has talked to them a lot about me.

It is actually known, medically, at least in some circles, that giving neuroleptic ("anti-psychotic") drugs to people with catatonia or parkinson-like movement disorders (both of which are words for often the same symptoms, catatonia being originally a neurologic term that was hijacked by psychiatry), is a really, really, really, bad, stupid, idea. These drugs can create parkinson-like and catatonic movement disorders even in people who don't have them. Logically follows that drugging people who already have them... it makes us far worse.

I was experiencing a slow and steady decrease of voluntary movement skills with normal or better-than-normal involuntary/triggered movements, something that's seen as parkinsonian in some circles and catatonic in others... since I was about 11. I was showing mild signs of such a movement disorder from a young age (stiff gait with arms not swinging, passive in social interactions, difficulty in initiating, clumsy with voluntary movements but graceful in triggered ones), but nothing like it became later.

Anyway, when I was 14 years old, someone gave me Thorazine because I was slamming my head on a wall in a psych ward and Thorazine is apparently what you do to people there. My father noticed an immediate change in my movements at that point. He says I have never moved the same since. During that time, I experienced somewhere between 3 and a little over 4 years (I'm not good with time) constantly on one neuroleptic or another. I have severe reactions to most of them. Even the mildest one I ever tried has the capacity to kill me if I have the wrong reactions. Low-dose Risperdal, which is supposed to be okay supposedly, made all my muscles clench up so bad I couldn't wash myself or stand unaided, and that was only when I was awake, because I slept 20 hours of the day.

I did experience an immediate and abrupt response to these drugs that never left my movement the same again. This makes sense because I already had a parkinson-like movement disorder and that is a perfectly normal and already-noticed response to these drugs. Since parkinsonism has to do with the dopamine system and so do many similar movement disorders, and these drugs lower dopamine, it isn't rocket science.

Every autistic person I know who has the same movement disorder I do (yes, it's called "autistic catatonia" in some circles, although Dr. Dhossche's articles on it are often horrid and his attitude towards people who have it and want to determine our own lives is condescending... see Wing and Shah for something more respectful), has experienced the same reaction to neuroleptics, and most of us have been told by regular mainstream doctors that it's a bad idea for us to be on neuroleptics because of our movement disorder.

The problem is that psychiatry took over the idea of catatonia at one point back in the Freudian days, and psychiatry has very little if anything to do with science. Since psychiatry has mostly classified catatonia under the nebulous "schizophrenia" category (even though it has nothing to do with loss of reality contact generally, except inasfar as people petrified with fear can experience something similar-looking but of different origin), and since psychiatry normally gives neuroleptics to people in that category (a practice that originated in shutting people up, not in helping people not hear voices or anything -- that justification came later), then some really dumb psychiatrists give neuroleptics to people with catatonic/parkinson-like features.

So, that guy in the article, and I, both now not only have whatever parkinson-like traits we were originally possibly experiencing, we also have a major push-along by neuroleptics just in case we weren't having enough trouble with voluntary movement already.

(An example I always give about voluntary movement vs. triggered: I went to visit a part of MIT where they use galvanic skin response things to measure physiological arousal and stress. I found, to the surprise of everyone there, that even the smallest voluntary movement results in large, measurable amounts of physical stress, meaning it's measurable how hard it is for me to move. However, rocking (an automatic movement) made the stress level go down, and typing (a movement that is triggered an automatic) did not have any effect on the stress level at all (which is how all movements, even vigorous ones, are for people without this movement disorder).)

So, yes, I have a measurable movement disorder that existed long before I was on neuroleptics. But yes, neuroleptics made a major and permanent change in it. It's the difference between a slow progression and a drop-off. Neuroleptics created a drop-off. This effect on people with this kind of movement disorder, and indeed the severity of the effects of neuroleptics on us, is actually known to doctors (I've seen it written among warnings of what not to do to people), but not always heeded.

Also, I do know a lot of people with this movement disorder who are autistic. They don't give ECT to people with parkinson-related movement disorders unless psychiatry grabs us first. Anyway, one of the people I know with this movement disorder almost died from ECT. Another one found it excruciatingly painful when she woke up from it. Neither noted any improvement in catatonia. And nobody I know who has this form of catatonia and has had ECT, has had anything remotely useful about it. That's Dhossche's vile contribution to the understanding of this condition, and it's why most of us just have doctors that say autism with associated movement disorder or autism with parkinson-like movement disorder, because it means the same thing, is even more accurate, but it won't make psychiatry come running with its hare-brained and dangerous "solutions" to what's not even part of their field.

We had one instance of the Abilify causing dystonia, where the muscles become clenched like in a cramp and the body twists or distorts to conform to the pressure from the muscle. It's painful, however benedryl corrects the problem almost instantly. Both boys take a lower dose of abilify than the one that triggered the dystonic reaction, and they also take a generic benedryl equivalent to prevent any side effects. Dystonia is scary, and painful. If NOT treated it can also be permanent and disfiguring.