Physical & Mental Health IssuesMarriage and relationships are difficult by themselves, but coping with physical or mental health problems can make things even more difficult.
Anyone have history with this? Is it worth it for my kid to try?
Sorry, I know this is not marriage relationship related question (other than my slightly dysfunctional marriage to hubby has resulted in depressed teen??)
Anyway... My child, son, is 18. Will be 19 end of this month. He has decided to finally come out & say he has been feeling depressed for several years. Mostly since highschool began, but much more so in the past 1.5 years.
I thought something was up before, & mentioned he could get at least some free beginning counseling sessions from a program at my work. Mentioned it again 6 months ago. Said again probably 2 months ago & reminded that it would be free to try it. Monday, he comes to me shaking & quivering voice saying he thinks he needs to do it. I tried to ask questions (seeing how severe, or if any suicidal thoughts.. etc) BUt he said "please... it took me enough just to ask. I can't talk about it". So I said okay & called the next day. They got him with a counselor for Wed afternoon. She said he needed to see a doc , so if he needed meds, she could talk to his family doc. Also to rule out physical underlying problems that might cause depression symptoms. (i guess like a vitamin deficiency??)
ANyway, long story short... He saw my doctor today (he didn't want to go to the pediatrician, which was the last dr he saw.) and the Doc decided to put him on 20 mg of citalopram (generic Celexa), and said to keep doing therapy & to come back & talk to him about it in 2-3 weeks. The earliest appt they had for him was 4 weeks.
So, does anyone have positive experience with this generic drug? (or negative?)
My husband has been on the generic brand for about 2 1/2 months now, so far so good. They started him at 10mg for awhile to get in his system good, then went to 20mg which is where he is still at. I noticed a difference and he has too. I think the maxium dose for that is 40mg. Meds work differently for people, so all you can do is have him try it. Is your son also in therapy for the things going on and for the depression?
He's only had the first "assessment" session so far. She scheduled him to come back next Fri 20th. She said he needed to be very proactive about getting into see a doc before that time. I guess his description of his depresive feelings in past year.. she really wanted him to start on something.
I guess my fear.. was, I went on google to try to learn more about the citalopram. The biggest fear is the withdrawl symptoms. I read a couple of forums where some were on it 5 days & didn't like the feeling at all... and either had to do a very long wean off, or some stopped cold turkey (against advice). Either way,.. they both seemed to complain of the withdrawl symptoms for a long time.. (weeks & months). Finally I had to leave the site. - Like everyone jumped on the negative band wagon.
I'm worried(ish) that if this isn't the drug for him, the stopping it will lead him to worse feelings than he has right now. I guess I just wanted to hear some good things about it.
Thanks for sharing. Jr doesn't have anger problems. I don't know if he is simply depressed, has anxiety problms, or just low self esteem. I do have a sister that is bipolar, but he does not show the classic symptoms, or any signals of the problems my sis went thru in high school. So, in my heart, it is not bi-polar. He's too mellow to ever have a "mania" episode.
Antidepressants do have negative side effects. Some can have a zombie like effect...they kill all emotion good and bad. When I have taken them, I could go into a movie theater to see a tear jerker and never even think of crying.. good/joyous things don't seem so exciting either. They can kill libido and make you anorgasmic. And definitely, if you stop them abruptly you will feel 10 times worse..but just for a few days..it's very important to taper the dosage down.
The good thing is for a lot of people, taking them short term can pull you through an episode of depression/anxiety. Once I had severe generalized anxiety and took celexa for a couple of months, tapered the dosage down gradually and stopped...I haven't had anxiety since. Seems it corrected my imbalance. Depression and anxiey are exacerbated by stresss and trauma.
My choice is Wellbutrin for maintenance. It is milder and has less side effects. Mostly, I take it to help with fatigue and body aches.
Chelle, there are different levels of bipolar. I'm not saying your son has that, just informing you that just because he isn't manic doesn't mean its not possible to have a certain level of bipolar. It more than likely is the depression. I understand you being leary about certain medications, because they do have some side effects. He wont know what works until he tries it. Sometimes mild side effects will go away after it gets in a persons system good. You do need to keep a watch on it though and he does need to tell you or his doc if any bad side effects are going on. If the Celexa isn't for him, hopefully they can find something else that works. My wife had to try about 3 different medications before she found one that worked/helped her acid reflux. One was a medication that the doc gave her, it caused bad headaches and she had to stop it. Its the same with depression meds, you have to find something that works.
Thanks folks.
Yeah, I know that some "bipolar" depressives are actually unipolar.
(swing between normal & lows or very lows... with no mania). I was a little worried this a.m. because he had severe insomnia last night on only one pill. & I know it takes a couple weeks for it to build into the system. I wondered how bad the insomnia could get.
But now that I've read more up on it, seems like the insomnia is a beginning side effect, that can & mostly goes away in a few days to a week.. while the body is getting acclimated to the drug.
Jr says he wants to give it a full go before he gives up on it. I guess the depression & self negative thoughts are worse than he wants to admit to dad or me.
So okay.. we got the ambien from the doc, so he can sleep tonight if the insomnia keeps up. Doc gave him one week. I really don't think he'll need a full week.
I'm really hoping this citalopram will work for him, because as I'm reading up more on some forums, he sounds like he also has social anxiety disorder. I don't really know about the "anxiety" part of it, but he always has shyed away from social things. I think he just has no desire for it. I always just thought that was a personality trait & he was basically the opposite of a "social butterfly". Didn't think it was a disorder.
he's not "afraid" to go out.. ie, to the store, etc.. but has no desire to go social places that interact with others.
So maybe there are more good effects for this citalopram than what I'm seeing on net.
I hope he does ok on any medications they try for him. I'm sure it can be frustrating trying to find a med that works. I hope the Ambien works. My neighbor takes that and swears by it. I tired it once and it did not work for me at all. Not only did it have the opposite effect on me and kept me up, the next day I didn't like the person it made me become. Luckily I called the pharmacist and he told me to not take it anymore. By the end of the day after it was out of my system, I felt better.
My son is 15 and has been on generic Lexapro (Escitalopram) for about 6 weeks now. From what I understand, this is very similar to Celexa as it was derived from Celexa. In fact, when I asked my son's doctor for the generic form of the Lexapro she ordered, she accidentally wrote the prescription for citalopram instead of escitalopram and seemed to think they were the same thing. I still asked her to change it, though.
He started on 5mg and bumped it up to 10mg after two weeks. He's been on the 10mg for four weeks, and it seems to be helping. He's on it for anxiety, not for depression, but I think it's having a mood-stabilizing effect in addition to the antianxiety effect. He says he feels more "optimistic" and he is noticeably calmer and less anxious. He also seems to be able to concentrate a little better (severe inattentive ADHD, which I'm hoping improves with control of anxiety).
I have the same worries as you. SSRIs are largely trial and error, and who wants to err on this with their kid? Like with citalopram, many people have reported a difficult weaning off of Lexapro when they stop it, and there are a lot of potential side effects.
My son had some "feeling funny" and tiredness after his first dose of 5mg which lasted for 1 1/2 hours, so he switched to taking it at nighttime. He takes it right before hitting the bed, so he sleeps through any initial side effects now and doesn't complain of any side effects during the day. My guess is that he wouldn't even have them anymore even if he took it in the mornings because I read that a lot of people only have those effects in the first few weeks after starting or upping the dose.
He's pleasantly surprised. His biggest worry was feeling emotionally muted, and he doesn't feel that way. I guess maybe we lucked out the first go round with SSRIs. I hope so.
ETA: My son also has social anxiety. Some people with this do report improvement w/ Celexa or Lexapro, but not all. I don't think I'll get a good reading on whether or not it's helping with that until after school starts in August. We've been too busy moving to do enough socializing lately to tell.
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Generic Celexa ? 
