Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello my autistic 16 year old son has recently been diagnosed with GAD and PTSD. It’s been a difficult journey to get support - he’s been too anxious to engage with therapy and been off school for some time and missed the whole of year 11. The hope is that the meds might help him enough to start to engage in life again and eventually access the therapy he needs. However, having read about the side effects he is just terrified of how he might feel if he takes the meds. He has lots of sensory issues around feeling nauseous had some general issues with his body and feeling uncomfortable. Although rationally he can understand that he might feel better he’d rather just stick with how he is than risk being the person who gets all the side effects. He is happy to take other medication such as painkillers and antibiotics but feels very different about this. I’ve told him he doesn’t have to take them and to think about it/wait until he’s ready. But I can’t help feeling frustrated.
Has anyone else experienced this or got any advice on how he might be encouraged to try the meds?
Thank you
I had a truly awful experience with prozac/fluoxetine.
I found that it removed the carefully installed limititations I had placed on my own behaviour and literally made me more evil.
After that particular experience, NONE of which went as I was led to believe it would by the medical profession, I realised I was better off working my own problems out.
OTOH I have a friend who takes the prozac and he doesn't seem to suffer ANY of the effects that I did.
All I know is that I started out depressed and then I had prozac and a few days later ended up dealing with what I can only describe as a psychotic ideation which seemed really real to me at the time, but I could see was logically impossible. Against all advice I discontinued the stuff STAT, and my life gradually returned to normal.
I concluded that I'd rather be a bit unhappy struggling with the life I had, than become actually dangerously bonkers.
30 years later I find out that I am Autistic, and that my depression was not an "illness" but an understancable reaction to the life I had then.
I then made changes to my life, to improve my own situation, including handing the keys back to the house that I was seriously underwater with...
Perhaps not a particularly helpful post, I know, but MH care is a bit of a lottery, and getting it can ruin your life just as easily as it can make it better.
I can trot out some M/H "horror stories", whcih underpins my caution when seeking help with my own issues, but all that shows is that some people are lucky and get help that works and some are not and get help that makes things worse for them, as I describe above.
I hear good things about regular excercise being vital to some peoples M/H, Also there's a lot of work being done right now about how dietary deficiencies might play a part in some MH issues.
Sorry to hear your experience wasn’t good and thanks for sharing. Unfortunately changes in lifestyle such as exercise are difficult at the moment as he is just so anxious.