Aripiprazole, anybody else's kid taking this?

Baggy Bags

Active Member
My son was recently diagnosed and is now on 10mg of Aripiprazole a day.
It's an atypical anti-psychotic and they say it's to help him with his intolerance to frustration and impulsiveness. He's only been taking it for just over 2 weeks and I understand that it can take up to 5 weeks to really see the effects.

Does anyone else have experience with this? What for? How long? Did it help?
 

HMBgal

Well-Known Member
My grandson has been on it for a couple years. Big weight gain and constant hunger at first, but while he eats a lot now, he's not insatiable and he's not overweight. But since he was coming off stimulants (which didn't work, but we kept trying different ones), he hadn't gained weight in two years. So we figured the weight gain and height gain was something he needed to do. It has worked okay. The potential side effects are scary (if you're one of those Googler types, which I am) but the only weird thing we saw was some excess saliva and he would drool occasionally when he was lost in thought. I know they wanted him to have blood work done, which we never did because it would have taken six of us to haul him in there and hold him down and listen to him shriek and be convinced he was dying. I mean, his anxiety is really like that. They started him off at 2.5, moved him to five, then ten.

I think it helped. I know that when we tried to take him off of it in November, he had to go back on it.

He doesn't have any of the bad side effects. Certainly not the ones he had while he was taking stimulants for his ADHD. Because of his anxiety of whatever the other thing is that we still have nailed down, stimulants didn't help. The aripiprazole hasn't helped his focus in school (he's 11) and certainly hasn't solved all his problems. Every kid is different. Good luck and I hope helps your boy.
 

JRC

Active Member
My son is on this and we are titrating down. He was on a high dose of 17.5mg and is now on 7.5mg. Big weight gain but it does work for his purposes--suppressing mania and hypomania. Very difficult to get off this drug because of withdrawal symptoms. We're reducing because he was over medicated (brain fog, balance loss, etc). I think it's safer than many other atypical antipsychotics but I am not totally sure. That said, no one really knows what these drugs do to developing brains.
 

kim75062

Active Member
Mine is now 7, he's been on it for about a year. We took him off it for a few months because of brain fog etc. and he was being homeschooled at the time anyway. We did the same titration, 2.5,5 then 10. The 10 was to much for him. He's been on it for about 2 months now at 5mg and his impulsiveness and emotional outbursts have dramatically decreased again. Also no side effects for him so far this time.
 
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