Medications

Stimulants help many children focus and be more successful at school, home, and play.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are a class of antidepressants. While they are called "antidepressants," studies have shown that these medications are also effective in treating anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders as well. Due to their decreased adverse effects, increased safety, and easy administration, SSRIs have become the antidepressants of choice for prescribing physicians.

Mood stabilizers are most likely to be effective in treating manic excitement. These medications are frequently used to treat such mental disorders as depressive disorders, mania, and schizophrenia. Lithium, carbamazepine (Tegretol), and valproate are the common mood stabilizers used for treatment.

A person who is psychotic is out of touch with reality. He may "hear voices" or have strange and untrue ideas (for example, thinking that others can hear his thoughts, or are trying to harm him, or that he is the President of the United States or some other famous person).* He may get excited or angry for no apparent reason, or spend a lot of time off by himself, or in bed, sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. He may neglect his appearance, not bathing or changing clothes, and may become difficult to communicate with saying things that make no sense, or barely talking at all. These kinds of behaviors are symptoms of psychotic illness, the principal form of which is schizophrenia. All of the symptoms may not be present when someone is psychotic, but some of them always are. Antipsychotic medications, as their name suggests, act against these symptoms. These medications cannot "cure" the illness, but they can take away many of the symptoms or make them milder. In some cases, they can shorten the course of the illness as well.