We meet with the assistant principal on the new school on Monday. My son is naturally increasingly nervous.
Last night he woke me at 2am to tell me he couldn't sleep and he was a failure and he couldn't remember when he was ever really happy. We talked...and he improved his thoughts but then irrationally decided that staying up all night would mean he would not sleep in next day as he'd be awake??!! No amount of talking him around would change his mind. He assured me he would do nothing 'stupid' as he hated the sight of blood.

I was dead tired so had to just fall asleep again myself. At 7am he woke me and said he'd stayed awake all night and would i watch something on the iPad with him. I wasn't about to face the morning. Later when I got up - he was fast asleep and at midday still is. It is tiring when they are not in a good place in their mind. But this is kind of 'normal' for us - so we just kind of plod along and crawl over the bumps!!

A friend of mine whose son is now taking the same medication, on the other hand, went drastically downhill and is now in an adolescent psychiatric unit at the hospital. He is only 14. He was running away and self harming and the last self harm was really awful.

My gut feeling is that while I know her son was feeling suicidal - I wonder about the medication. One of the side effects when first taking some of this medication is suicidal thoughts , possible self harm and so forth. He just seems to have gone downhill so quickly - four weeks - since taking the medication.
Has anyone else had issues with Luvox (Fluvoxamine)?
For my son - I just don't feel it works - but maybe if he wasn't on it - he'd be worse.

Take care everyone
Linda

Hi Linda - sorry to hear your son is not doing well. T did try Luvox at one stage - didn't have any bad side affects but didn't help either. My doctors first anti-depressant for children/adolescents is lovan (Prozac) and this is what T did well on the first few years. My 20yo daughter has recently had a bit of a breakdown - has been coming for a while with anxiety related issues and finally came to a head when uni semester went back. So off to the doctor we went and he didn't hesitate with our family history to start her on medication (Lovan) and booked her straight in for psychologist appointments. She was at the stage of not eating or talking and staying in bed all day - almost 2 weeks later she is pretty much back to her old self. She did feel awful for first couple of days but nothing too sinister. We are hopeful she will only need to be on it for 6 months and with the counselling get her back on track. T has been on Escitalopram for the last couple of years and still doing well - have halved her dosage and still doing well. Over the years I have worked out if a medication is not showing positive effects within the recommended time frame or stops working, we are straight back to the doctor for either a dosage adjustment or change. Interestingly some recent research I was reading about indicated that some people do better on a lower dose that the recommended one, especially for anxiety disorders. Thinking of you both and also hope your friend's son improves in care. xx