once medication is helping your child without any side effects how often you make an appointment with your child psychiatrist.

[lightflower]

My 16 year is now on 54 mg Concerta for almost more then a month and it is helping him to focus in the school without any side effects. How often do you make an appointment with your child Psychiatrist if everything is going well with out any side effects.

My son's Psychiatrist wants to see him every 2 weeks.. which is becoming expensive for us.

[Pennywink]

We currently see our prescribing physician every 6 months, unless we are having issues. We did see them every two weeks for the first month or two to make sure it wasn’t affecting his weight / growth more than expected.

Hope that helps! I know with a separate condition I have, my physician started fairly frequently & gradually push back the length between appointments. Maybe ask your psychiatrist what the overall schedule plan is, and if it’s too much ask to make adjustments.

[anirush]

If we change medications we see him a month later to see how things are going. If things have been going well for a while we see him every 3 months. Some controlled substances have rules about how many refills they can give before they have to be seen.

[Cjkchamp]

We see ours once per month when things are good. More frequently at times when they have not been good.

[lightflower]

Thanks a lot everyone for replaying.

[Ppfg]

We have a 17 year son on same dose of concerta for about 9 month and while we have seen improvement on concentration we have also seen a reduction in appetite and consequent weight loss. His eating patterns have been definitely affected by the drug.

He is now seeing his psychiatric every 4-5 months after an initial monthly visit for the first three months.

He has also benefited by seeing a therapist for Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

Hope this helps.

[lightflower in reply to Ppfg]

My son's appetite was effected for couple of weeks when we started the medication. Slowly it came back to normal.

[ScatteredMommy]

While they are adjusting and testing for side effects it was every 2 weeks. Now it is every 6 months (i think required by law) unless we want to adjust the dose.

[Janice_H]

Hello lightflower - my son sees his doctor every 6 months for medication management.