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Qualms about Medication
I think medication is absolutely fine. I didn’t have any qualms with putting Stephanie on a medication, when way back when it seemed that all indications were that she would benefit from it. My husband felt exactly the opposite. She probably would have been on medication about 12 sooner than she was except my husband needed more time to be convinced that this was the way to go for her. Now my husband totally understands. He saw the difference with this newer medication. So when I speak to him saying like “Well, I’ve been hearing and seeing the flags and this is what I think so I’m having her re-evaluated today,” his response is very accepting of it, that “Oh yes, that’s what it sounds like from previous experience.” Stephanie did OK on her first medication; for a number of years we were in a situation where we felt that things weren’t great but it allowed her to learn. Then she switched her medication maybe about four years ago and this medication is just a much better match for her. Along with allowing her to learn, it’s allowed her personality back. It’s as though the first one really changed her affect; it made her irritable. Didn’t want to use medication, but it helps I decided with Sam’s doctor that medication would most definitely help his behaviors. I find that it has helped him so much. He is able to focus at home and school, he is not impulsive, his behavior is in control and he is not so hyper. I did find that he had side effects that made matters worse but there are trials and errors. I really didn’t want to go to this route of putting him on mediation but he couldn’t learn or function without it and that mattered more to me. Not at all. I had no problems with putting Nick on medication. Maybe that was because I am a psychiatric nurse, so I knew the ins and outs of the meds. It was just a matter of finding which medication worked. Over-prescribed – but kids that need it should have it One would hope that ones child wouldn’t have to take anything. It is always better not to take any medication in terms of they aren’t exactly sure about long-term side effects and that kind of thing. On the other hand if you don’t take medication and you have ADD and you do poorly in school, you don’t get it like your friends did— you start to get depressed. That’s not good either. In Julie’s case I don’t see doing nothing as a benign alternative. I wish that it were not an issue and that Julie did not have to take stimulants. I’m not thrilled about that. I’ve gotten quite matter a fact about it because I can see how much better she does and how much better she is. She doesn’t take it on the weekends usually. If she has a big test she might take some on the weekend. She doesn’t take it all summer either. She really uses it to go to school. In terms of the general issue, I think it is a big problem. I think it is over-prescribed. I think in general psychotropic medications are over-prescribed. I think we are a pill popping culture looking for a quick fix. A lot of people really don’t want to slog through the hard stuff. But I do feel strongly that it can change your life when it is the right thing. Like everything it is overused, but I feel strongly that kids who need it should have it. I was really hesitant about medication. I certainly didn’t want to jump into medication, but, I think if you’ve tried the other things and they don’t work, then I think it’s a disservice not to try medication. Especially with my first I was uneasy Especially with my first child I was really uneasy, because I was unaware of certain side effects, long-term effects, if it would become addictive, if it would lead to addictions later in life. But I was told, and it did make sense to me, that sometimes not taking care of the problem could make kids so frustrated that it could steer them in the direction of doing drugs or alcohol to try to get away from it all. I have a friend whose husband won’t allow their little girl to be medicated. She’s very much like Lindsay, and I see that she has such a hard time with kids, she has a lot of meltdowns, she’s very frustrated. My heart breaks, because I really think that if she was on the medication, her life would be a lot easier. Lindsay can get by without the medication, but is it worth it? I don’t think it is. She has a real hard time in school-- she probably was in third grade before she could learn to read because she had such a hard time being able to concentrate, and she talked all the time about how stupid she was because she couldn’t learn to read. It’s not that she’s stupid; she just couldn’t sit and concentrate. I just don’t think that’s fair to withhold medication from a child if you can give that child the medication and help them learn, and help them feel better about themselves. I mean, Lindsay’s never been medicated to the point where she’s tired or mopey or anything-- she still has plenty of energy and she’s still very active. I don’t see any kind of personality change or anything with the medication. It’s just enough that I don’t even see change in her except that the teachers can see that she can sit and pay attention to her work. I don’t notice any change in her in her outside activity at all. She used to not be on medication during the summer, but she recently got to the point where she was evidently miserable without the medication, where she just couldn’t control her impulses. And that made her unhappy. I’d rather have her happy. I didn’t worry about medicating Nick. I think some of that’s because I’m a nurse and I knew that the medicine wouldn’t hang around in his system very long, and because we started with five milligrams a day, and gradually increased it. And he truly has never had a side-effect. So it made it easy not to have any kind of trepidation with it. I wish we did not have to put Scott and Jason on the meds. But it makes their life a whole lot easier. It is scary to think what will happen to them someday. I always wonder if someday they will find out the meds cause cancer or something. It makes me sad that we have to make them fit into this world with meds. They did so well when they had a teacher willing to work with them. But if you get a teacher that doesn’t, and you’re not on meds it can be awful! Not convinced that medication is the way – Part 1 You see so much on the news and in the media; so many kids are on these medications that they shouldn’t be. Society is trying to put all these kids in the same box and if the child is the least bit out of step with everyone else, it’s “Let’s just put them on medication.” That is a concern for a lot of parents; I know I was concerned about that. When my first son, Andrew, went on medication I felt that we were sort of railroaded into putting him on it and I really didn’t want to do that. I didn’t think he needed medication. But I was getting a lot of pressure and this was preschool! So we took him into the doctor and he said, “Well, yeah, he’s got these kind of tendencies.” You do all the little checklists and they send the checklists to the teacher. And the teachers do the checklists and they send them back. They say yeah we can put him on this— whatever low dose of Ritalin was at the time. That seemed to help him a little bit, but I wasn’t convinced that medication was the way to go. He was my first child, so I read all the books and did all the diets they recommended— no red dyes, no preservatives— we did everything. When he changed schools, I started him in the classroom the next year without telling the teacher anything and I thought, “Let me just see what happens.” Well, within like a week, I’m down at the school about why my child can’t sit still and we got that same pressure thing again. So we put him back on medication then in kindergarten. Not convinced that medication is the way – Part 2 Then we moved, and I decided to go talk to the new teacher. I said to her, “Look, my son’s been on and off of Ritalin the last couple of years I’m not convinced that’s what we need to do, but I’d like to have you keep an eye on him and let me know what you think.” The teacher seemed pretty good. I thought “Let’s try this out and see.” She worked so hard with him and then she said, “If you don’t want to put him on medication, I’ll do everything I can to work with him.” She was really great, but it was so sad because he couldn’t sit still in his chair, and he kept knocking his chair over, so they took his chair away and he would stand and work. Then he was bothering kids around him so they put his desk off somewhere else and finally something happened and he came home after a couple weeks into first grade and he said “Mom, can I take those pills again?” He’s in first grade! I said “Well, Andrew, what’s wrong?” He said— and it will just break your heart— “When I used to take those pills I had friends and now I have no one.” So I thought I don’t care what anybody says; this is a child that needs medication. For all the kids that are on Ritalin that don’t need it, he needed it. Not convinced that medication is the way – Part 3 So we went to the doctor and she was wonderful and totally understood. She did a bunch of stuff and she went back through Andrew’s records and said, “Here is a case of a kid who probably does need to be on Ritalin. He was on it until seventh or eighth and then he didn’t want to be on it anymore. We tried a couple of other things like Aderall and Concerta. Then eventually somewhere between ninth and tenth grade he stopped taking everything and he’s doing wonderful. Her father doesn’t like Julie being on medication. He never has liked it. She started in third or fourth grade— no maybe not that early— I can’t remember to tell you the truth. Maybe since fourth or fifth. He was always against it and I kind of overruled him. I just said to him, “Too bad— we are doing it my way.” I had a very strong feeling that it would be necessary. I guess he felt that somehow she could just learn to pay attention. I don’t think he saw it as I do. He’s a very accomplished writer; he has written ten books. He never did well in school and he doesn’t really care about that kind of thing. He doesn’t think that is what makes you smart or not smart. So it didn’t matter to him as much what her grades were going to be as much as it mattered to me. I don’t know why I won, maybe because I just wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’m sort of the person who organizes the children’s health care. I’m the one who takes them to the doctor, dentist, and therapist if they need one. So I just went ahead with it. He went and met the child psychiatrist and heard what he had to say and then he said, “Okay, let’s try it.” Sometimes, like when we go see the child psychiatrist, he’ll say when we get home, “Can she stop taking it?” It’s like a subtext. It’s not a big bone of contention, but I’m sure he would prefer that she not take any medication. But he can also see that she does better when she is on it. Just because your child needs medication when they are younger it doesn’t necessarily mean, or not mean, that they’ll need it for whatever amount of time. I think some kids are going to have to be on it maybe forever, I don’t know, and some kids can handle behavior modification without any medication, and Andrew, maybe he’ll go back on it, I don’t know. |
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Hospital Boston Department of Psychiatry. All Rights Reserved. The information on this website should not be taken as medical advice, which can only be given to you by your personal health care professional. Updated: February 12, 2007 |
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