To not give my teen DD medication

[Foxjonessssss]

My 15 yr old DD has ASD and OCD, both diagnosed by CAMHS who she is under. She is brilliant in every way and manages so well. She is in grammar school doing really well academically but struggles in other ways. The school are great and really help her.

She has had therapy via CAMHS and through school but still struggles with intrusive thoughts.

CAMHS consultant has said it’s now time to start medication. I have really wanted to avoid this for her. I don’t want her on medication that has side effects and she may be reliant on. DD doesn’t mind either way.

I just think she has done so well with everything without medication I wish she didn’t need it ☹️

AIBU if I don’t accept the medication for her?

Intrusive thoughts are horrible. Sometimes meds are needed whatever. Sometimes you need meds to take the edge off in order to be able to fully work on your therapy. I think listen to the CAMHS expert, talk to them about your concerns, but ultimately as your daughter is 15 it is her decision (as she'll be gillick competent). Be careful to not let your fears sway your daughters decision too much. She may already be keener than you think but be giving a neutral opinion as she's picked up on your worries, or she may have her own worries (maybe some overlap, maybe they don't) but she should have the option to speak to her consultant openly about those. I'd also say it's better to try medication now than it is to wait until things start going wrong.

And yes as others have said.. she is coping brilliantly. But as I'm sure you know, girls are excellent maskers. How much of her doing brilliantly is her masking? It's a rhetorical question and one that's impossible to answer but take heed from some of the other posters here who speak From experience.

Are you a member of the private FB group 'autistic girls' network' ? I found it about 4 years ago and it's been a brilliant source of information and support. You'd get some more additional advice / support and first hand experiences on there. Your situation will absolutely have been discussed / asked on there before.

How disgusting a comment.

Many high-functioning autistic girls "cope brilliantly" - until they don't and go into autistic burnout, leaving them incapable of doing even the most basic of tasks.

Please don't dismiss how difficult it will be for your DD to "cope".

FWIW - I was very reluctant to put my ADHD DS on medication when recommended by his psychiatrist. She pointed out that parents are often afraid- and that just because you start them on meds doesn't mean you have to keep them on meds. We agreed to trying it out for 6 months.

It was a revelation. In DS's case he is not a different child- he is the child he really is, when all the white noise of ADHD and anxiety is not at the front of his brain getting in the way. It's been life changing and life affirming.

If she had a physical illness like diabetes would you refuse medication in case she became‘dependent’ on it ?

Would you.

Would you also not take painkillers if you broke a leg, or antibiotics if you had a severe infection?

You can't seriously be on the internet encouraging someone to deny their child potentially life-saving medication.

Unfortunately this is an all-too-common attitude when it comes to medication for mental health conditions and it leads to so many people struggling when they don't have to.

It's awful.

But she would be tested for something and be shown the results of those tests and have routine (daily) testing to show when it was needed.

What such tests exist for this medication? How often are they conducted? Do the meds raise of lower something? What is being measured? What units are they being measured in?

Comparing two different things.

Why is it disgusting @whippy1981

I would consider a parent who withheld, say, painkillers or antibiotics, at a time of need, to be cruel and abusive.

Medication for an invisible illness shouldn't be treated differently.

I would do as there would be a biological need.

My dd found her ssri extremely helpful at managing her asd related anxiety and phobia I feel she needs to decide.

If medication could dramatically improve her quality of life then why wouldn’t you do anything you possible could to help her achieve that regardless of what the illness or problem is?

Just let her try it

What are you talking about 'biological need' @whippy1981

I wouldn't give paracetamol when there was no need or antibiotics for something that isn't biological. Say for instance if your child was bullied or lived in extreme poverty would you give them paracetamol to cope? If so, why?

@Foxjonessssss The one question you really need to ask your dd: Are you suffering? If it's yes then not giving her medication is cruel.

So there is no biological need?

Why bother wasting NHS resources to get a diagnosis only to refuse the treatment?

Not really. She's been diagnosed with a couple of conditions, OCD and AD. There is clinical evidence that certain medications help ease some of the symptoms of these eg intrusive thoughts. This can be assessed by the clinician on how the patient presents, how they report feeling, and using various clinical mental health questionnaires that rate symptoms. So they can see qualitatively and quantitatively how symptoms are changing through time. I think it's akin to something like pain medication and how they monitor and assess how that's needed and at what level.

Doping and ignore the suffering is cruel.

That’s incorrect, my son had medication for ASD as a teenager and it helped him enormously.

Oh really? Would you say the same if a parent were refusing medication for cancer because they wanted to see if fasting or Ayurvedic herbs would help? Or for diabetes? Or for hypertension? OCD is a psychiatric illness that can have devastating consequences - psychiatrists don’t prescribe medication to minors willy nilly. So yes, not accepting it is withholding treatment which I would classify as neglect/abuse. Projecting this attitude of “medication is bad” to a vulnerable ASD adolescent is even worse.

Coping and managing aren’t enough OP and she still has intrusive thoughts.

I know you say you have accepted this as all you have known but she really does need to give it a go

I started taking lisdexamfetamine in October, at 34. It's changed my life and I too wonder where I would be had I been diagnosed earlier. I've got more done in the last three months than I have in the last three years.

OP, if the consultant thinks the medication is necessary then I think she should be encouraged to try it. If she has unpleasant side effects she can stop. I'm not sure what you mean by being reliant on it, what's wrong with that?