Hi All,

firstly I am sorry if this has been discussed before and I am going over old ground. We are new to the site and to be honest a little bit overwhelmed by events at the moment. We have a 10 year old daughter who recently was diagnosed with ASD. This didn’t come as any surprise to us at all. Already having a daughter who is 18 and also has a diagnosis of ASD, we knew the signs and we had already been putting things in place at home to help our daughter cope with the difficult world she lives in. To cut a long story short, we have been having a very rough and challenging time over the past year or so. Our daughters mental health has taken a massive dive and as a result she has become increasingly aggressive, agitated, unhappy, suicidal. She was admitted to hospital 4 times last year after 4 attempts to take her own life. Sadly things have continued to go down hill and we find ourselves back in hospital again. This was following a few weeks of a very marked decline in her ability to regulate, us being able to keep her safe and the very very high aggression levels. During the past year we have had some intense support from social services, CAMHS, BRS, intense support workers. This support has been aimed at us as parents to give us more tools to help our daughter. We have been given more coping strategies, ways to try and reduce her anxiety levels, her anger levels and generally ways to try and keep her safe. None of the help/support has been given to our daughter or looking into the cause(s) of what we are seeing and dealing with on a daily basis. 
Since being in hospital this time (day 4 so far) our daughter has gone into ‘crisis’ on a number of occasions. This means that she has become so agitated, aggressive and abusive that she has posed a risk of harm to herself or others. On each occasion we as parents have not been with our daughter at the onset and of the crisis. This is important to note as we feel that the blame is being placed with us and that we are causing the anger issues. I am quick to add that our 10 year old is child number 7 and that although our 18 year old has ASD along with complex epilepsy, all of our children (some of who are adults now) are all happy, healthy people. We fail to see how the blame can be placed at our door and wonder if it is just professionals trying to pass the blame or trying to deny that there is in fact any issue at all. 
After being in hospital for less than 24 hours and after our daughter needing to be restrained by nursing staff, the mental health team have had discussions with the community CAMHS team. At first we had asked the question if any other medications could be considered, not that we want her to have to have medications but we also don’t want to see our daughter so distressed all the time. We were originally told that they would not prescribe any medication but now that she has been in crisis several times in hospital the doctors outlook has changed. They have now prescribed aripiprazole and have been told that this is widely used to help with aggression in people with ASD. So our first thoughts are if we as parents are the cause of the issues why would they prescribe medication but also how widely used is this drug and how good is it? We would be so grateful to hear from anyone who can make any constructive arguments either for or against this drug. Also we would love to able to chat to anyone else who has or is going through anything similar to us. Thank you in advance. 
Paul & Vicki