I have a 12 year old daughter who is being treated with inattentive add/depression, but I think she might be bipolar, and not too sure about the add thing. This is the first time she's been evaluated by a pdoc but we've been going to a therapist and she thinks my daughter is more bipolar (1) than anything else.
She's been on Celexa 10 mg for about 4 months but still has bouts of sadness and a lot of anxiety/anger issues, especially if she has issues with friends or doesn't get enough sleep. The pdoc added Adderall to the Celexa thinking it would help with the supposedly add and omgosh it turned her totally manic. We had to give her clonazepam to get her to chill out and she basically became a teenage happy drunk! She doesn't even remember how she was coming off the stuff. It was kinda scary.
Anyway...he's now got her on extended release Ritalin...hoping that would work better than the Adderall, as we think it dumped too much med into her system all at once. Sigh. This totally sucks, going through the trial and error with the meds. But I know that's the only way of finding out what works.
How do you parents cope with this? We've already had a bad 12 months in our family. My husband lost his job recently and we are mourning over the tragic loss of our 14 year old son who was killed in a boating accident in July.