son is not taking medication

[Zoe Girl]

Dang it, I get my son back last night for the week. I had my Valentines date which was very awesome, amazing food and he brought flowers for both me and my daughter. That is beside the point. So AGAIN this morning Tyler is crying, hurting, sitting on the floor, etc. I ask all the time if he takes his medicine (antidepressant) and he says yes, but he acts like he is not on anything again. So I finally asked him for the bottle, it was filled Jan 4th, there are 21 pills left, yeah.

Tyler is different than his sisters with this (everyone has depression and truly needs treatment so I don't want to discuss that point please). He just takes so much more out of me when he is not taking medication. Tamarin right now is totally off her meds and we have drama but she is functional overall. Tyler is unrealistic like asking to sleep more and more when there is school, has pains everywhere, and cries for hours. I am only writing so i don't start yelling and losing my mind. I have done a lot of yelling at times when he refuses to go to school over and over. Now I have to inform his dad that he hasn't had his medicine in ages and all the progress he has made is gone. He has bo perspective at ALL in this condition so I don't even know where to start, I just know that on my third kid with an illness that society does not really understand or accept I am pretty worn out.

[Anne Lee]

Whew. Teenagers in general are hard. Teenagers with mental health issues are exponentially harder.

All the best on getting them to a place where they are responsible for their own self care. For whatever reason, boys - depressed or not - seem to be really dense about this, until they realize they get more attention from girls if they do...

[Zoe Girl]

Heck a lot of grown men really struggle with basic self care. I was thinking about this when I saw the clusters of homeless throughout town, they are all men. I saw more white men than should be represented by our population and I wonder if women and minority cultures have stronger family ties in general. It seems that although white men are the top of the heap in many ways if they don't make it in the working world then they are the ones with no safety net left either.

[early morning]

Zoe Girl, - first, ((( ))). Been through this with my son, and a thought comes to mind - is he just on meds or is a therapist involved? DS did better when he had both. And perhaps your son needs a different anti-depressant and doesn't realize it. I know with my son, the first one he tried made him feel like a stranger -in his words- and the second made him feel like he was walking through glue. The last one he tried made him feel "almost normal" so he actually took those. Is it possible Tyler would benefit from a change in meds??

[Tammy]

boys might have more problems with side effects of antidepressants. girls seem less bothered by the sexual side effects, boys not so much.

[reader99]

I second the different meds idea. I've taken several anti-depressants and the difference in the unwanted effects was very wide. A teen may not be self-aware enough to realize and put in to words when a med isn't just right.
Since he is a teen, and has a particularly sharp decline when not medicated, can you/dad/whoever give him the pill each day? Might not seem age-appropriate but it seems to me it would be condition-appropriate.

Possibly too complex for a youngster, but I have had terrific and astonishing success with the food program in Kathleen Desmaisons' "Potatoes Not Prozac" which is not as dumb as the title sounds and very doable for a fairly organized adult.

[JaneV2.0]

That has always annoyed me, too. It's not like they had to pay extra for a comma...I've recommended the book in the past, and never without panning its stupid title.

[Zoe Girl]

So the goodnews is Tyler has started taking his meds with a pill reminder dealie and he is bouncing back faster than I expected. It also prompted him to take his allergy meds and a vitamin. Pretty cool. He has a counselor for anxiety who seems to be helping. There were a few days where it wasn;t just that he was depressed, he was also getting so unreasonable that i considered it not nice to the momma. I am slowly getting the sense that it is okay to insist on a level of nice-ness to the momma. So when we went to the counselor (he does biofeedback and also just talking) I told him that putting me through this extreme drama was not okay and starting to affect my job. The next couple times that Tyler started the extreme meltdown which usually turned out very bad he was able to tell me a few things, we adjusted, and he got to school.

I really do understand that kids and teens can't really get all the logical thinking together however I have to believe some basics like if you don't go to school and do your part, or take extreme caregiving, then mom and dad can't work and there is no money. That is pretty basic. Having depression myself for as long as i can remember I do know that sometimes it gets overwhelming but usually there is a point where you can take a baby step and still make choices.

[Anne Lee]

Glad to hear he's on the mend and pat on the back to you for setting reasonable expectations. One of the things that depression does(I know you know this) is make everything all about the sufferer. Sometimes, you have to get old school to break through that. I'm not talking about being cruel or harsh but just clear, direct and very very firm. Depression is a big dog, you have to bark pretty loud to be heard over it.

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you, I had such a nice long lovely reply when I went to let in the drain cleaners and bumped the wrong button.

So I was saying that I know from my background that playing extreme tough love is pretty harsh, but treating the person like they have no responsibilities is also not gonna work. Like everyone else with a chronic illness they need to still work hard, find their limits and accept a certain level of unfairness.

Then also I keep coming back to using all this great stuff I have learned how to do with my teaching degree to work with affective needs students. it would be under a special ed degree and considering the economy and how districts are cutting massive money I am not sure about doing this if I cannot do it all on grants. Meanwhile I love my job, I oversee 4 schools totaling 20 staff and 240 students. I have only been doing this 2 1/2 weeks and I already have kiddos coming up and hugging me when I visit their school. (I feel weird bragging). So I think I am good at this, and maybe my kids could be much much worse off without me.

[screamingflea]

Zoe, I'm really glad this is working out better for you.

It's trite and it's been repeated on this forum ad nauseum for years, but please remember to take care of yourself through this too. Get your own therapist if you think it'll help. Go to a support group, and encourage one for your son as well. And there's the common sense stuff about good diet, sleep, and exercise. If you're in bad shape, you can't take care of him either. Be well, friend. We're all behind you.