Parents of Bipolar Children Support Group

Hi

My grandson is 18 years old extremely med compliant and doing well with 12 mg. abilify. Currently he is under stress about getting scholarships and grants in place for college next year.

A major symptom that remained after the Abilify controlled his mania is OCD. It takes the form of continual ruminating thoughts about things he feels he needs in order to be a success. These things are somewhat prohibitive in cost and we can not front the money months before they are needed without putting ourselves in a bind. His mother is on SSI also for bipolar and his step-grandfather and I are near 70 years old. At this point he is feeling he must have an extremely expensive lap top for school in September even though we have another lap top at home and other computers. We are willing to get him the lap top he needs, but not until school starts.

My grandson is not insisting on this, but he is ruminating and feeling depressed to the point that it is extremely painful.

He has an excellent psychiatrist we see privately and who was Chief Fellow at UCLA in the Psychiatric Adolescent unit in whom we have complete confidence. His doctor is slowly raising a adjunct paxil which will go to 40 mg. this week.

Is anyone else familiar with this kind of OCD problem with bipolar and/taken Paxil to alleviate the OCD?

Hi Marlynn. My daughter gets like this too. She absolutely had to have one of those small netbooks for college. She now says that nobody uses them to take notes in class and that it's too hard to see the screen. When she has papers, she uses the computer in our living room. So, its sits. But she absolutely HAD to have it. She is also afraid of carrying it around in the open due to the recent rise of assaults/and killings on students on and around campuses for electronics and other personal items. Maybe you could let your grandson know that this item he wants may not serve a useful purpose and may in fact cause more problems than it is worth.

Her pdoc did not try paxil for these OCD-type symptoms. He tried another antidepressant. Well, we found out she can't handle ANY of those. I hope that it will work for your grandson though. Let us know how he does.

My daughter gets stuck on an idea of something she MUST have....luckily nothing as expensive as a computer. But I am familiar with the scenario.

Just remembered the name of the antidepressant he gave her for her obsessive tendencies: "Luvox".

Hi, I'm really interested in hearing more on people's experiences with the OCD behaviors. My son is 29, has been out of the psych hospital for 3 months and is currently taking Respirdol, Lithium and most recently Celexa for his depression. His main symptom right now is rumination. He cannot make simple decisions like what to buy at a grocery store, and is frought with feelings of doom like whether he will ever be "ok". I have been going to his psychiatric appointments and his psychiatrist has been slowly reducing the Respirdol and increasing his Celexa. I'll have to look up what the differences are between Celexa and Paxil. I do know that my son needs something in addition to Lithium as the last time he was med compliant for a year, he was on Lithium alone and he spent that year depressed and in bed.

I know my daughter seemed to reach a turning point with lithium. Some of her meds are still being adjusted, of course, but occasionally I do see some "circular thinking" -- I don't know if it is a mild form of OCD, but she will go over the same issues over and over and over again, and will usually get herself all wound up and upset. Sometimes I can help talk her out of it, but sometimes it takes someone else to break her thinking patterns.