Hi, In a different thread Malika asked a good question: If your child takes medications, what is he like without them?
Here is here quote:
"If your son is taking medication and his behaviour is still very disturbed and disrupting, what would he be like with no medications? I often feel confused about the fact that children who are medicated seem to be manifesting violent, aggressive or disruptive behaviour - making me wonder what the point of medicating is."
I'm sure the answer to this question is different for all of us and depends a lot on the child's diagnosis. My difficult child has Bipolar Disorder 1, among other things, and we recently had the chance to see what he was like with-o medications (due to an illness...long story). It was awful...His mood cycled multiple times a day and he was way more aggressive and violent than he is with medications. I will never again say--in a moment of frustration--that his medications are doing nothing. They might not do as much as we need them to do, but they definitely help. We had "forgotten" to some extent what life was like before our difficult child took medications.
With medications, our difficult child has some bouts of mild mania, but he doesn't have the horrible depressive drops afterwards. He can be irritable and whiny. Without medications, the mania is higher and the depression is dramatic and dangerous. Without medications, our son borders on psychotic when he is depressed.
The wrong medication can be worse than no medications, but the right medications can make life better for the child and the whole family.
Here is here quote:
"If your son is taking medication and his behaviour is still very disturbed and disrupting, what would he be like with no medications? I often feel confused about the fact that children who are medicated seem to be manifesting violent, aggressive or disruptive behaviour - making me wonder what the point of medicating is."
I'm sure the answer to this question is different for all of us and depends a lot on the child's diagnosis. My difficult child has Bipolar Disorder 1, among other things, and we recently had the chance to see what he was like with-o medications (due to an illness...long story). It was awful...His mood cycled multiple times a day and he was way more aggressive and violent than he is with medications. I will never again say--in a moment of frustration--that his medications are doing nothing. They might not do as much as we need them to do, but they definitely help. We had "forgotten" to some extent what life was like before our difficult child took medications.
With medications, our difficult child has some bouts of mild mania, but he doesn't have the horrible depressive drops afterwards. He can be irritable and whiny. Without medications, the mania is higher and the depression is dramatic and dangerous. Without medications, our son borders on psychotic when he is depressed.
The wrong medication can be worse than no medications, but the right medications can make life better for the child and the whole family.