Do not give your son SSRI's. The research coming out of Yale's Autism Center suggests SSRI's for those with autims/ Asperger's aggrivates autism symptoms, not relieve them. Our daughter was on Prozac and Strateraline and it drove her nuts. The trend to prescribe them has become a "fad", not based in good science but doctors are slow on keeping up with the latest research and might not know. Check it out.

Our son was on an ssri he has adhd and was diagnosed in the last year with ASD Aspergers. His anxiety was so bad it was making him sick and getting him to school was a nightmare. The SSRis made him MUCH WORSE! They caused him to have tics and his depression got worse. BE CAREFUL!

Our daughter's psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic supports Yale's findings that SSRIs for any ASD symptoms has little to no effecacy. He said using SSRIs in ASD people is "like throwing gasoline on a fire". If your pdoc (?) wants to disrupt the fight-flight response in your son, he should be using calming meds like Klonopin (diazapam)and Depakote (antiseizure). Prozac and other SSRIs are anti-depressents so they have a "stimulating effect", to increase mood. This is the opposite of decreasing anxiety, which requires the calming/ soothing of mood.

I think that I don't look at antidepressants as a dependency. I think that if you don't have an imbalance that they help, then you won't use them. It's really no different than using insulin if you have diabetes or glasses if you're born near-sighted. I don't think that juvenile diabetes or near-sightedness are perceived with any stigma; nor are the treatments deemed to be only temporary...it's perfectly okay to treat them for the rest of your life. Why are chemical imbalances in the brain that create things like depression, ADHD, bi-polar, etc, stigmatized and somehow treatments are always looked at as temporary until you get "better", lest you become dependent. Antidepressants are not addictive and all they do is level you. As I've pointed out to my son, they're not happy pills...you'll still get angry, sad, happy, etc,...they just keep you more level so you're not losing your mind if you can't find a sock, for example :-)

How old is your son? And has he ever gone off of them? My son started on antidepressant medication for anxiety and anger outbursts, because he has absolutely no tolerance for any level of irritation, when he was 11yrs old. Once he was about 13, he became responsible for taking his own medication. Although, I reminded him, I couldn't physically put it in his mouth and he became very inconsistent about taking it and boy, we found out very quickly how well the medication HAD been working once he wasn't taking it. He is now 20 and has continued on the same medication with some minor dosage increases over the years. And, over the years, periodically he has been careless about taking it and we can always tell when he's been off his medication after about 2 weeks. He doesn't just get normally angry or irritable...he's angry at everything and the smallest things freak him out and cause a tantrum; and although he's normally a bit sarcastic, he becomes cruel and demeaning to his siblings. He also becomes much more rigid and believes the rest of the family is against him. The difference is that now that he's older, we were able to have a long discussion with him and explain to him how his behavior changes, and I think we were able to get through to him sufficiently that I don't believe he'll be that careless again. Sorry for the length, but I wanted to explain thoroughly.