Oxybutynin (Ditropan) and child mental health

[BeJadeBird]

My DD age 11 has been on oxybutynin medication for an overactive bladder since 2022. Over the past year or so she has struggled hugely with mental health issues (anxiety, depression, OCD) which have really taken their toll on us all as a family too. I never thought this would be anything to do with her medication and it never came up during consultations with our urologist. Interestingly we took a break over the summer from the meds (partly to see if her bladder had strengthened) and very gradually she showed some signs of improvement and seemed a little bit closer to her ‘normal’ self. Now that she is back at school again and struggling with needing to go to the toilet frequently we re-started the tablets but a couple of weeks in, the mental health issues have gotten worse. I feel like this is too much of a coincidence. Whilst there is some patchy evidence of Oxybutynin linked to mental health, there doesn’t seem to be any solid data. I’ve stopped the meds but really worried that they may have caused lasting cognitive damage to my DD. Does anyone have any similar experiences of this and have they noticed improvements and hopefully full mental health recovery after stopping the medication or advised of anything by their doctors? My consultant just said she’s never heard of it with her patients but I don’t think it’s been researched enough. Curious to hear of anyone in the same boat. Thanks.

DS (now 14) was on oxybutynin for his overactive bladder from the age of 8. By the time he turned 9 he'd had a nervous breakdown, developed severe anxiety, was refusing school and on two occasions said he wanted to die.
He had also just been diagnosed with SpLDs and his primary were being useless so initially we attributed the mental health problems to that but eventually we saw a specialist who suggested there may be a link between the oxybutynin and his mood and switched him to tolterodine.
He improved a fair bit after that switch (but the bladder problems continued) so they then tried him on solefenacin which triggered another relapase in his mental health. At that point we realised that there had to be a link between these drugs and his mood and took him off everything.
Tbh if I had my time again, knowing what I now know, I would never have given him the meds, but we made the best decision we could with the evidence we had.
He has largely grown out of the worst of his bladder issues, and became dry at night around age 11. He still drinks very little and never pees at school but he rarely has an accident. And he's still an anxious kid, but normally so, not to any real extreme, his mental health lifted within a year of coming off the drugs. Feel free to DM me if helpful.

Appreciate you sharing your experience - thank you so much