Focalin, any thoughts, harmfull??

[yesy275]

My 8 year son has been on focalin 10mg, it has helped a lot with attention and body regulation, is this med harmful? Any thoughts, experiences

[DblTrblMom]

My 10 year old twin daughters are both taking Focalin XR - they started on 5mg but after about 1 year have changed to 10mg. The psychiatrist we work with insisted on a baseline EKG and blood work before meds were started. She repeats these each year to make sure she is not seeing any issues. She also measures weight and height at each appointment to make sure meds are not affecting growth.

So far so good, no issues found.

[yesy275 in reply to DblTrblMom]

Thanks so much for the reply, my son too got an EKG when he started the meds, good reminder to ask Doctors to perform again in a year, thanks

[Cjkchamp]

My son was on Focalin. He initially had loss of appetite but eventually adjusted and that subsided.

[anirush]

My 15 year old grandson was on focalin XR starting in kindergarten. He stayed on at all through grade school until it stopped working in middle school when he was on 30 mg.

He was in honors in grade school on that medication. The only side effect was he wasn't hungry at lunch time so we filled him up at breakfast and dinner.

[Elijah1]

While it is commendable that thorough testing is being done, there is no risk of heart problems related to Focalin use in children with no heart disease. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued updated guidelines for diagnosis and management of ADHD and routine ECG is not included. There was a bit of controversy in the late 2000's when the American Heart Association made some recommendations for heart evaluation related to stimulant use in children with ADHD but they quickly backtracked the comments after 'feedback' from other professional societies.

[yesy275]

Great for all the great feedback

[marab88]

My daughter was on it for a while and it worked great and we went up to 10mg. The downside of it was it killed her appetite and she lost a lot of weight (and didn't have much to lose as it was). The other problem - and why we switched - is that she can't swallow pills (even at 11, she still can't) and we had to switch to a liquid medication (she's on Dyanaval 5mg now).