Whiney and defiant! WOW what a combo!

[AmyH]

difficult child has not been sleeping well for over a week now. He is too scared to sleep. Got an email from teacher this morning. He is building paper air plains and reading a comic instead of working. Been to the nurses office 3 times this week already for aches and pains. Was so whiney in the other class yesterday that teacher emailed me and said she was at whitts end.

At home if he wants to do something and we say later he keeps on asking. Are you sure I get to ____? Yes, Blake later. When? Are you sure? Please don't forget? When? And keeps on and on and on and on. Get my point.

A few months ago he told a test modarator that he heard voices and now that is all he talks about. Then he says do you believe me? And of course we say yes. Last night he showed me a picture of the figure he sees, it was from on of his books. And I said wow, Blake you have a great imagination to but that figure with the voice that you hear. he said "it is not imagination it is real. So I explained how real is something that we can tough, feel, feed, so forth. and he said oh, I made up a good guy that is real like that.

This kind of talk worries me. I don't know what to believe and not to believe. To top it off sometimes he just acts bizzare crying for no reason, talkin like a baby. But by far the voices worry me the most.

Thanks for letting me vent!

 

[BusynMember]

It sounds like he is experiencing both auditory and visual hallucinations. I would call his psychiatrist. It could be his medications or it could be part of bipolar disorder. It is common for anyone with bipolar to hallucinate. I wouldn't brush it off and put it down to imagination. Imagination is way different than hallucinations. Ask him what the voices say. Are they "commands?" Do they tell him to do bad things? Do they say bad things about himself? Does this figure he drew represent something scary to him? Tell you right now that Concerta alone can cause hallucinations. Concerta PLUS Zoloft...I'd be hearing voices too. Kids with bipolar tend to do poorly on both stimulants and antidepressants and he's on both.
I'd give this one to a Psychiatrist (with the MD), not a therapist. Because he isn't getting better, you may consider a different opinion on those medicatioins. I've had hallucinations on several antidepressants and I definitely have a mood disorder. Good luck.

 

[butterflydreams]

My difficult child is also having visual and auditory hallucinations. His drawings of what he is seeing I feel also resemble things he has seen possibly on TV or video games. But to him they are very real, and very scary. He is also now believing that the current figure is touching him and has scratched him.

You should definitely report this to his psychiatrist. My sons psychiatrist is keeping track, but doesn't make a big deal about it with difficult child because he doesn't want to feed into it.

Christy

 

[AmyH]

Thurs. will be our second appointment. with the new psychiatrist. He was on Ritalin and Zoloft when we started and he changed the Ritalin to Concerta (which is basically the same thing) and added the Abilify. I was diagnosis with- bipolar about 3 years ago. I guess my questioning it is more out of being secared myself than not wanting to believe him. I am truly afraid for him, how awful would it feel to be afraid of something all the time like that. I just did not know what to do NOT to feed into it. I want what he is saying to be real and not extra to impress anyone.

Chew on this- He came home yesterday and told me that one of his teachers had told him in front of the class that he was "acting like a big baby" I thought "no way" not after all we have been through this year with him. So I emailed her and sure enough she did say that. Sometimes I just want to scream. He already has anxiety, poor self esteem, depression, serious lack of friends and you just added fuel to the already out of control flame. I called the principal. I know there are only 5 1/2 weeks left in school but I want him out of those classes. He has two teachers about 2 months ago the other one called him weird in class and we had a huge confrence about that now this one said that.

Is is me or are these teachers at his school clueless about Bipolar, ADHD, Depression, anxiety.

 

[Marguerite]

There was a TV program on Aussie TV the other night, I mentioned it on the Good Morning thread. One of our top researcher/interviewers, Andrew Denton, has a TV show called "Enough Rope". This week the episode was called "Angels and Demons" and dealt with just what it is like to have bipolar. He was also talking to people with other problems, but by far the main focus was on bipolar. People described their voices, drew them and explained the problems they face. One woman who was writing songs describing the emotional turmoil, had some beautiful pictures of her 'good' voices (she calls them her angels, they look after her) as well as some ones of her demons. She said with therapy she is learning to recognise and ignore the demons.

Follow this link - http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/
and you should be able to download transcripts & maybe view some or all of the program online. It really was good, this guy has always been brilliant at shining a light where people are too afraid to look - and making us look in spite of ourselves. Very compassionate, very enlightening.

I just figured, it might help if you can really get inside difficult child's head to understand how he feels, so you can feel more confident in the decisions you have to make.

Marg

 

[AmyH]

Marg-

Thank you so much. I will check into that site.