Anyone else's child on Risperdal?

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If you read this please do not put your child on Risperdol nothing good will come of this.

Risperdol is often used to treat persons with szchophrenia and other servere forms of mental heatlh issues, as well as serve behavioral issues.

It is defiantly not a drug that young children should be taking.

I hope this helps.

Ok, now you anti-Risperdal folks do realize that the dosage given to children with autism is WAY FREAKING LOWER that the dosage given to psychotics, Bipolar, etc don't you? 1mg, the lowest dpse possible is the common dose for Autism- sometimes 1 1/2 or 2 mg/day- that's max according to the MIND Institute study my daughter participated in.

My hubby has ben crazy busy and he is the one who doses her meds. He realized today she's missed them for 2 days. We are having meltdowns galorre this afternoon and agression that resulted in her attacking her 6 y/o brother- primal animalistic hissing and scratching at him. Thankfully just one scratch down his face to worry about. BTW, he did nothing yo provoke it. She's just at wits end this evening.

There's tons of stuff out there.

Even the natural stuff -- which seems fairly expensive if you ask me:

http://www.nativeremedies.com/ailment/a ... order.html

Please do not put your child on that medication. I have aspergers. I slept for hours during the day, muscle twitching, and I gained over fifty pounds. It also fogged my mind. I got off of it, and I am a lot happier. Making changes to his diet and exercise would be the best thing.

again, as i've stated numerous times before.....not every med works for every body....certainly people have had bad reactions to meds. our doc swears by Concerta for ADHD- our daughter tried it & ended up with hallucinations. we immediately took her off of it.......as with any medication you take, you need to be aware of the contraindications & act accordingly. I'm allergic to pennecillin- doesn't mean it cannot be effective for other people......

Just to be a fence sitter - I think you all have great points. J was on dexamphetamines (don't know a trade name in US sorry) from age 5 till 10 to keep his ADHD under control and it was a godsend. As soon as he was put on it, he slept normally, calmed down and was able to be reached - you can't give TLC to a child who is bouncing off the walls and trying to punch your lights out whenever you try to approach him.

OTOH he got to 10yo and the meds just stopped working! So his psych tried Risperidone (Risperdal) and he put on so much weight he could not tie his own shoe laces cos his belly got in the way, with no observable difference in his behaviour - so I took him off it. Next we tried strattera - mild difference but the cost was prohibitive ($300 per month). We gave it all away and he is certainly so much better now - but there are still days.........

Cheers

I would never put my child on drugs...they are poison...there are many other ways to deal with their "issues"...ie. including homeschooling...yoga...peaceful bedrooms with lots of sensory stuff...diet, etc...

But if you must, please read this...

http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com ... view&id=38

PS - my nephew was put on that when he was 15...he attempted suicide this year...thankfully, after being airlifted to a hospital and in life support for a couple of days, he made it through...My sister didn't listen to me when I told her to TAKE HIM OFF...she blew it off as "Dr. Knows Best"...side effects don't happen to everyone...She has now taken him off, no more psychiatrists and changed her parenting...he's as happy as could be...this was March 2008...

actually, my nephew was on seroquel after rispedral failed to help him and made him worse...switched to seroquel and attempted suicide...

By the way, someone stated...medications do not help your child, it helps you and other adults deal with your child.
Unless you begin to show your child NOW how to calm down, ie. yoga, diet, excercise, etc...do not be surprised when your child is 18+ and spends the rest of his/her life on medications because he/she has not been taught how to deal with stress, etc...and instead was medicated.

I find it disturbing that in this post there are so many judgemental posts about parents that choose to use medication with their children.

I would suspect that for most parents this is not a decision arrived at lightly - as evidenced by this post.

What works for some children does not work well for others, the same strategies do not work for all children. They are all unique.

100 years ago, many of the children would have been permanently institutionalised in psychiatric hospitals. Parents did not know better. IN fact many of those children that were different in many ways were SOLD to freak shows if you go further back in time.
To this day children with disabilities in third world countries are variously abandoned or killed. So implying that care in the past was better is just completely false.

Parents ( I assume you are not one ? ) do not generally try to make poor decisions for their children, normally they are just trying to do their best and take the best advice they are given at the time based on the information available. There is a lot of information on these drugs which is available for parents to research ( both pros and cons )

I think there are probably a quite few parents on these forums who choose to say nothing about having their child on medication because of the judgemental attitude you and those like you are displaying. I understand you have your own personal experience of taking medication which was obviously not pleasant for you. But everyone is different, everyone's circumstances are different.

There may be parents that have children who are self harming or harming others, who eat nothing, have difficulty with impulse control have sleep disorders etc and all the other things that Rispirdone can address.
They may have tried everything else up until that point. Would your suggestion be that they just continue to let the child hurt himself and siblings ? That the parent/s continues to let their child starve themselves till hospitalisation point, that they should continue to have 2 hours sleep nightly and lose their jobs, be unable to support their family and succumb to depression ? Often medication is the last resort and the only one they see available to them and their child.

There is more than one scenario out there. Quite frankly only looking at your own is very short sighted. My husband ( who has AS ) took rispiridol as an adult when he was suffering from depression and was on the verge of having to be hospitalised because of his frequency of suicide attempts and self harm. He made the choice to take that drug as an adult obviously, but he has said to me many times since that point - "I hated taking that.. but I would not have come through that alive without it. " The medication allowed him to get to a stage where he could actually deal with his problems, up until that point he was so wrapped up in his issues he could not see a way out of it and was so completely incapacited by it , that he could not make any of the changes that he knew he needed to make if he was to survive. ( I do mean survive quite literally)

Parents try to make the best decisions they can for their children from the small decisions like buying them clothing that looks nice, or larger decisions about surgery or schooling) This is the parents job, to make decisions on behalf of their children that they feel are best for their child. Making those parents feel guilty that have chosen medication as an option or are considering it, is not supportive and is also not particularly well informed. There are a lot of children that respond well to that particular drug, and there is also a lot of evidence from a number of studies to show that it has no harmful long term effects, some of the possible side effects like weight gain and sleepiness are benificial side effects for some children. A low weight child who has no appetite, may increase their food intake. A child that does not sleep well at night - if the medication is given at night, will aid sleep etc.

There are alternatives to try that do not involve medication, and by the time most parents are considering medication they have been through those other options.

Most parents do not set out to harm their children, but to make well informed and good decisions for their child. I am sorry you feel your parents made a bad decision for you, but not everyone is the same.

Very well said Saffy! It was a hard decision to put our almost 3 year old on this drug however it has made such a tremendous difference in everyone's day to day living at home and outside of the home she can now tolerate the grocery store for 45 minutes where as before it would become to much she would get home and have an hour meltdown. She is on a sensory diet through OT and at home she gets plenty of floortime etc... Until she is a little older and we can teach her some "coping skills" this was our only option. Although it is pretty funny to see her doing her deep breathing

We tried it but it lead to too many meltdowns...