Fluoxetine and dd with aspergers, anoexia and compulsive behaviour

[meercatmum]

my 13 dd has been prescribed fluoxetine by CAMHS psychiatrist to help her anxiety and to help her to be more receptive to advise from weekly CAMHS sessions re eating etc. Can anyone fill me in with their experiences with this drug. She will be on it for 12 months approximate and only started it one week ago. I was loathe to go down drug route altho CAMHS did reassure not addictive or personality changing. Thanks

I took SSRI medication for OCD at 18, so quite a bit older than your DD. Obviously everyone reacts differently to medication, but I never found it addictive or personality changing. But it is best to wean off gradually, rather than stop cold turkey, to avoid withdrawal symptoms. IME it takes a few weeks to start working, and a few months to have a significant effect, it's like a gradual shift in mood that makes life less and less unbearable. IME these sort of anxiety type problems can make you feel very depressed, so you do need to have your mood lifted a bit to benefit from the talking treatments, CBT etc.

It can also take a couple of weeks for your body to get used to the medication, so you can have side effects such as agitation, difficulty sleeping, upset stomach etc in the short term.

Meercatmum my dd was on fluxetine for about two years if you want to talk about it please do pm me as you posted this a while ago and I'm hoping everything has worked out now.

Meercatmum my 15 year old DD is recovering from anorexia she has been on Fluoxetine since September. It has definitely reduced her anxiety and helped her cope with going back to school and tackling eating normally again. I don't think it makes everything easy it just makes the hard things a bit easier to deal with.

Hope things are going OK make sure you look after yourself.

My daughter was on this drug, no long lasting effects...no personality change, just helped when we needed it!