“ACTIVATION”

[Sk8te]

Hello, my ADHD child with anxiety was prescribed his first anxiety medication. Lexipro 2.5 mg. Psychiatrist wants to treat this first. Within a few hours he started bizarre behavior like chewing and sucking on his clothes, fidgety, more hyper, uncontrollable teeth clenching and grinding and crawling almost animal like. I’m mortified. She said sometimes “activation” happens and that I would know it. Well I know it. If you’ve experienced this please let me know what happened, how long and what your Dr decided next this stuff just never ends... 😢

[Onthemove1971]

These trials are hard to get through. We has one where he was incontinent.. but now years later I asked my son if he remembered any of it and he said nope..

You will know when it is right for him.

I would recommend you ask how long does he need to stay on the medication with the side effect are bad?

Big hug for all the stress, this is just part of the journey.

[Elijah1]

Our son had activation with one of the anxiety medications (which totally disappeared when we stopped the medication) but did well on a different one. We learned to start low and increase slowly. It appears that there is no one medication that works for everyone so work with the psychiatrist about choices.

[Skeetpete]

We're in the same boat as you. Our 12 year old has severe anxiety and it has been debilitating to him. We started Lexapro about one month ago at 5 mgs and kept it there due to nausea. Last week we increased it to 10 mgs and we began to see an increase in depression and talking about how he just wanted to die. His psychiatrist tells us to stick with it. Seems like it's activation but also reading that it can be temporary before the benefits kick in. If it doesn't improve or gets much worse in the next week then I'm going to ask for something else. You're right about it never stopping but trying to stay positive.

[Sk8te in reply to Skeetpete]

He’s only had 2 doses. First dose ever was last Saturday 2.5mgs. Sunday was 1.25mgs. I’m writing this and watching him chew on his clothes. He has never done such a thing. Ever. Dr says it takes 5 days to get out of his system. Then wants me to start at 1.25mg. She was afraid the 2.5 was too much for him to start which caused all the word behavior. Maybe try lowering yours to 7.5? 🤷‍♀️ so hard with this. :/

[bdhb96]

My 9 yo has been taking Lexapro 10mg for about a yr now and it’s a huge help for the anxiety. He started out on a much lower dose then worked his way higher every few weeks. No strange activation happened for him.

Getting the anxiety under control was the psychiatrist’s first step to then know what was left to consider with the ADHD meds which were started later. He also takes Strattera 80mg for ADHD...it’s helping but it’s not a magic solution. Still with the anxiety under control most of the time it’s a HUGE help.

I hope your able to figure this out soon! It could haven more anxiety and ADHD actions that you witnessed since it takes a while for Lexapro to start working I believe.