Can Medication Help Your Kid?

Medicating Children

Can medication help your kid? This is a question with a lot of variables to consider. You definitely need the input of an adolescent psychiatrist who can evaluate and prescribe accordingly. Feeling hesitant to put your kid on medication? What about the side effects? These are appropriate questions which a psychiatrist should be able to answer.

Consulting a clinical psychologist first is a wise first step. Are there issues like self harm or suicidality? Is your kid losing touch with reality or having illusions?  A clinical psychologist can give you a battery of tests and a full report to give to a psychiatrist. This will give him/her a lot more information to go by.

Getting Them Stable

If your child is resisting therapy, finding a therapist who really understands teens is really important. We encourage you to look into therapy even if you get the medication. The value of medication is to get your child stable so that they can do the work. Eventually with the guidance of a psychiatrist they can get off the medication.

This Week’s Question

There are a lot of things to think about if you’re considering whether medication can help your kid. One thing is certain though: if you don’t do anything, the problem just continues to get worse. Here’s this week’s Tips on Teens question related to this topic:

“My 16 year old daughter has some issues. She’s really unmotivated, on her phone all the time, and sleeps a lot. For a while I just thought she was a typical lazy teenager, but about a year ago my husband and I realized she might be suffering from depression. She doesn’t seem to have one particular thing that bothers her, so it’s hard to tell. We tried therapy, but she wasn’t into it, and eventually we stopped. What I’m wondering is this: how do I tell if her problem is something that needs medication? Should I take her to a Psychiatrist? How do I get this diagnosed?”

There’s a lot to learn about this subject. Check out what Yale Medicine has to say about it.