Hey guys, so it's now been some months after my son's depression/anxiety attack. Let me summarize his situation. He was diagnosed at age 4 with ADHD and "Mild" Autism, he had been doing fine until shortly before turning 15 mid last year when for the first time he started showing signs of depression and anxiety so we started taking him to a therapist but in september it became severe that I took him to the ER, they referred him to a Mental Hospital where he stayed 10 days to stabilize the suicidal thoughts and attempt and they put him on zyprexa. When discharged from that hospital, for the next month we saw signs of him getting back to normal then they recommend a Psychiatrist who switched the med to Zoloft and he has been on this ever since for a few months now. Problem is, since he started taking zoloft, no suicidal thoughts or issues BUT over time I am seeing new what may be side effects of the zoloft.
Mike used to be a very happy very active child prior to the attack and now he's the opposite. He was addicted to his computer and never watched much TV and he could not sit still for too long, he would keep running around the house and outside every so often whenever he needed a break from his computer. Now, he is the opposite, he's hardly on his computer anymore, watches more tv now not all day but more than he used to. He spends most of the time just lying down and staring into space and now he can't seem to focus on anything for more than a minute and when he's doing anything he will zone out lost in thought, you would think he's sleeping. I am also seeing more symptoms of full blown autism as time goes by.
His Psychiatrist says maybe the attack did more damage than we realize and now it's showing and taking over. I am thinking the zoloft might not be the med for him and thinking of going back to zyprexa but he says the zyprexa is only used to stabilize suicide issues and he needs the zoloft to battle the depression.
To complicate things even more, Mike's new Psych says that the procedure when administering new meds is to start with a low dose [25mg] see how it reacts then increase slowly and test but his previous Psych saw that the 25mg wasn't working so he increased within 2 weeks to 50mg then seeing that Mike as not doing well with symptoms getting worse he increased to 100mg again within 2 weeks. Now Mike is almost non-responsive, it's like it takes a few minutes to hear that we are asking him a question and spends most of the day doing nothing, lost in thought and cannot concentrate on anything for more than a minute.
His new psych says we are going to take off zoloft in a safe way going from 100 to 50 to 25 then when he's completely off the effects of the zoloft we can try other options. Can anyone tell me please if what Mike is experiencing might be the depression taking over or might it be the effects of the zoloft?