OCD Action

susieq
Member

My 14 year old son has been an inpatient for 6 months - receiving CBT and ERP. At his last review I was told he has severe,chronic and resistant OCD. He has made good progress during his inpatient spell and he is slowly being reintroduced to school. This is proving quite challenging for him as he worries terribly about being accepted back by his peers - added to this he is now at the point of challenging his "8-10" worries. Discharge has been set for 22 July and there still seems a mountain to climb! The consultant has suggested my son augments his current medication(sertraline 200mg daily) with aripiprizole - starting at 5mg increasing to 15mg. I have been told there is a60% chance in sympton relief but a common side effect is nausea and vomiting. Both of these are HUGE for my son and if he was physically sick I think he would become very unwell and be unable to function at a reasonable level for some considerable time. I feel the hospital are not very happy about my relutance to put my son on this additional medication and that pressure is now being applied to me to start this additional treatment.(I asked the consultant what he would do in my shoes to which he replied "I'll abstain on that one"!) Does anyone have any experince of their child with resistant OCD and if so I would be most grateful if you could let me know of your experience and if you augmented your childs medication. Thanks!

Wed Jun 22 2011 3:52:01 #
Tess
Member

Hi susieq
Just wanted to say welcome to the forum. I can't really help you on this one as my OCD didn't start until I was 22 and I have no experience of raising a child with OCD but there are other mothers on this forum in a similar situation to yourself and hopefully someone will be able to help you. I can fully understand your reluctance to agree to additional medication for your son especially if the side effects may aggravate his OCD. Is it possible to agree a compromise with the hospital, to start the additional medication whilst your son is in hospital and to only agree to discharge when he is on the optimum dose and continuing to improve so that if there are any problems with nausea and vomiting the hospital will have to deal with it.

Wed Jun 22 2011 9:14:28 #
Ratwomble
Member

Susieq,

Yes, I just want to say welcome to the forum too. I'm glad my kids don't have OCD, but they do suffer from mine from time to time.

Tess gives great advice about letting the hospital deal with side effects.

OCD is bad enough at 47, must be horrible at 14. You might want to think about encouraging your son to join in here, there are plenty of people here around that age and there is a good sense of community. My son posts here (maxthedog). He's 15, doesn't have OCD, but really understands it,

Good luck

David

Thu Jun 23 2011 14:57:58 #
susieq
Member

Thanks Tess and David for your replies to my post. I really appreciate your comments. I am hoping to meet with the consultant this week (hopefully the OT will also be there, she really understands what we're going through) and I intend to try and see if he will compromise as you suggest Tess! Will post after the meeting to let you know how I get on!

Havent spoken to my son yet about him joining but will certainly encourage him to as I think he may get a lot of support and undersytanding from it - and maybe not feel so isolated.

Thanks again for your messages

Take care

Susanne

Sat Jun 25 2011 21:00:58 #