sudden phobias from Abilify?

ellenr1

New Member
Could the 10 mg. dose of Abilify my 16 yr old daughter recently started taking have anything to do with her new and uncomfortable fear of getting hurt or killed in cars or elevators? She rode an elevator comfortably last week but tonight said she was having scary fantasies of plunging to her death in an elevator car. She has had a few driving lessons with dad and seemed anxious to get her license, but just confessed that over the past week or so she shuts her eyes and holds on tight to the seat when riding in the car with me because she's afraid we're going to crash.

This is so odd. The only thing that's changed is the Abilify. She had an episode last week where she reported feeling restless, like she wanted to jump out of her skin (just before we titrated the dose up to 10 mg.)

Ex-husband and I have decided, along with difficult child 2, that if she is not able to tolerate the Abilify, and if it doesn't help, then we are doing a total medication wash.
 

Sara PA

New Member
This is the list of psychiatric and central nervous system side effects seen in clinical trials from the Abilify prescribing

Quote:
Psychiatric Disorders: Frequent - schizophrenia (including schizoaffective disorder), depression (including depressive symptom), hallucination (including auditory, visual, tactile, mixed, olfactory, and somatic), mood altered (including depressed, euphoric, elevated, and mood swings), paranoia, irritability, suicidal ideation, confusional state, aggression, mania, delusion (including persecutory, perception, somatic, and grandeur); Infrequent - tension, nervousness, nightmare, excitability, panic attack (including panic disorder, panic disorder with agoraphobia, and panic reaction), abnormal dreams, apathy, libido decreased, hostility, suicide attempt, bipolar disorder (including bipolar I), libido increased, anger, delirium, acute psychosis, disorientation, bruxism, hypomania, obsessive-compulsive disorder (including obsessive thoughts), mental status changes, crying, dysphoria, completed suicide, flat affect, impulsive behaviour; Rare - blunted affect, cognitive deterioration, logorrhea, psychomotor agitation, social avoidant behaviour, psychomotor retardation, suspiciousness, affect lability, anorgasmia, fear, homicidal ideation, tic, premature ejaculation, dysphemia, bradyphrenia,
derealisation, depersonalisation

Nervous System Disorders: Frequent - lethargy, dyskinesia; Infrequent - disturbance in attention, parkinsonism, dystonia, drooling, cogwheel rigidity, dysarthria, paraesthesia, hypoaesthesia, loss of consciousness (including depressed level of consciousness), hypersomnia, psychomotor hyperactivity, balance disorder, cerebrovascular accident, hypokinesia, tardive dyskinesia, memory impairment, amnesia, ataxia, dementia, hypotonia, burning sensation, dysgeusia, restless leg syndrome, hypertonia, Parkinson's disease, akinesia, dysphasia, transient ischaemic attack, facial palsy, hemiparesis, myoclonus, sciatica; Rare - bradykinesia, coordination abnormal, cognitive disorder, syncope vasovagal, carpal tunnel syndrome, hyporeflexia, intention tremor, muscle contractions involuntary, sleep apnea syndrome, dementia Alzheimer's type, epilepsy, hyperreflexia, mastication disorder, mental impairment, nerve compression, parkinsonian gait, tongue paralysis, aphasia, choreoathetosis, formication, masked facies, neuralgia, paresthesia oral, parkinsonian rest tremor, cerebral haemorrhage, dizziness exertional, hyperaesthesia, haemorrhage
intracranial, ischaemic stroke, judgment impaired, subarachnoid haemorrhage.</div></div>

Anxiety isn't listed because that's listed in a table showing the most common adverse reactions.
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
My difficult child 2 said he felt like he couldn't sleep when he first started Abilify about a month and a half ago at 7.5mg (takes it at bedtime). He's since titrated to 20mg and for several weeks hasn't complained of the "restlessness". I don't know if that's typical, but thought I'd throw it out there for you.
 

ellenr1

New Member
Sarah, I tried to highlight and print out the quoted material about the Abilify side effects, but for some reason I could only print out to the second line of the second paragraph (Nervous System Disorders). Did you pull all of this from a particular website?

It's hard to tell what she is really going through because she is wiped out from the mono. A lymph node on the left side of her neck is noticeably swollen, and seems to change size from day to day. This really stinks!
 

Janna

New Member
Ellen,

I saw an odd thing with Dylan once he was increased from 5 to 10 mg. in Abilify. He always complained he thought something was crawling on him after we tucked him into bed at night. Spiders, maybe? He wasn't ever really specific.

We thought this was an extension of behaviors from before the Abilify. He always had a hard time going to sleep. If you knew me before he was on this, one of my biggest complaints was his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) ritual of "I need lotion", "I need powder", "you forgot to mark the day off my calendar", "you forgot to turn the hall light on", on and on and on forever to tuck him into bed.

I spent a couple of weeks going up, turning on the light, ripping off covers to prove nothing was crawling on him. Interestingly enough, once we upped it to 15 mg., we have had no other issues (plus I think I proved to him nothing was crawling on him).

Sorry you're having such a problem.

Janna
 
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