- Medical Weight LossA: The risks associated with treating your child with psychiatric medications depends almost completely on which medication your child is taking. For example, treatment with stimulants, like Adderall or Ritalin, can cause difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, weight loss, stunted growth after extended treatment, increased heart rate, anxiety, increased anger and irritability, motor tics and in rare cases, has been linked to death due to heart failure. Some of these side effects are common and some extremely rare. With Depakote, a popular med for treating Bipolar Disorder, children require regular blood tests to evaluate the effect that Depakote has had on the liver, and the immune system. Depakote can also cause significant weight gain (up to 100 lbs in one year) lethargy and sedation. Again, some of these side effects are common and some extremely rare. Finally, an antidepressant like Zoloft has side effects like nausea, insomnia, diarrhea and you must watch over your child during early treatment because before the depression improves, your child's energy will return. He may find the energy to act on suicidal thoughts common in depression before the depression resolves.
- Family Practice
- Emergency CareRecently, I evaluated a seven-year-old who had been given five different psychiatric medications by the child’s prior doctors: two antipsychotic drugs, a mood stabilizer, an amphetamine, and an antidepressant. He had been previously diagnosed with both Bipolar Disorder and AD/HD. It might help to understand that this child had experienced extreme chaos, neglect, and unspeakable physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his drug-addicted parents. His home life alone would have been enough to explain why this child was angry and agitated! He was living in foster care at the time I met him. Unfortunately, I was only able to see the boy once in the psychiatric emergency room where I work part of each week. I eliminated one of his many prescriptions and encouraged his new caregivers to seek competent outpatient treatment for the correct diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I explained the diagnosis and the different treatments which could help him recover, and assured the foster parents that, with time, in a stable environment, and lots of reassurance from them plus psychotherapy and close monitoring of the proper medications, their new foster child had hope of recovery. In doing so, I dealt a commonsense blow to two troubling roots of the boy’s prior, ineffective treatment: a too-hasty and downright wrong diagnosis by his previous physicians, and their overloading his system with unnecessary chemicals that did not properly address his real psychiatric needs.
- Diarrhea
- NeurologyDr. Elizabeth J. Roberts, MD is a board-certified Psychiatrist who treats children, teens and adults in private practice at two locations: Murrieta, and Newport Beach, California. She has appeared on The Oprah Show, CNN, The Today Show, ABC News in Chicago and CBS News Los Angeles, NBC News in San Francisco, on Real Life with Mary Amoroso in New Jersey, and KZSW TV in California.
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)Millions of parents are struggling with the decision of whether or not to medicate their children for psychiatric disorders from depression to ADHD to bipolar disorder. Now physician and psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Roberts explains the risks and benefits of medicating and not medicating children and demystifies and simplifies the process of separating psychiatric illness from the other more common behavioral patterns in children, particularly defiance, or willfulness. Dr. Roberts clearly explains what she discusses every day with the parents of the hundreds of children she treats. How is a parent to know which behaviors are bio-chemical and which are simply the result of willfulness? When should a parent seek a child psychiatrist's help in medicating their child? How can you find a doctor you can trust? When is it more appropriate to use behavioral techniques? Dr. Roberts' insight will be invaluable in helping families wade through all the contradictory recommendations that often come from the media, the Internet, teachers, relatives, friends and neighbors.
- Depression
- Mental HealthA: If your child appears unhappy, fearful, excessively angry, failing classes or is struggling to get along with family and friends, to a degree greater than what you would consider normal, you need to seek help for your child from mental health professionals. He may need only counseling, tutoring or some other sort of social intervention but not necessarily medication. The decision as to whether or not your child needs to be medicated, requires a thorough evaluation by a child psychiatrist and careful consideration by you about the risks and benefits of medicating your child's mind.
- Psychiatry"Dr. Elizabeth Roberts, MD is one of the best psychiatrists practicing today. She is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist, board-certified, and an advocate for children. Dr. Roberts has an excellent knowledge of psychiatry, medicine, addiction treatment and other areas of specialty. She is one of the most honest, straight-forward and ethical doctors I have ever dealt with."
- Insomnia
- Anxiety
- Cosmetic Surgery