Anyone's Child Take Ritalin SR (Or Generic) 20mg?

[summerrluvv]

My son has been taking generic adderall 5mg for the past three months for ADHD. There isn't that much improvement and the only other thing our insurance covers is the generic form of Ritalin SR and 20mg is the lowest dose. I'm hesitant to go from 5mg to 20! That's a huge jump IMO. The dr. said to try for a couple of days and see if there are any side effects or if he is like a zombie. My son is 7. Does anyone else have a child on this large of a dose?

I'm really annoyed at the insurance company because the dr. wanted to put him on Focalin XR 10mg and they refuse to cover it.

 

[Christine]

My kids started on Ritalin LA (similar to CR) at 20 mg. It's really like taking a 5mg tablet every few hours--actually probably even weaker than doing that. They have now switched to Metadate CD (which is just a different brand but happens to be covered better by my prescription plan). My DD takes 30mg a day, and DS (11) takes 40mg.

Your son will probably be fine on the 20 mg dose, but you might notice a small difference the first 2 weeks. Personally, we found the side effects of Ritalin to be much better than the Adderall.

 

[barkley]

my son is on dextrostat so no experience with the drug you mention. but has your doctor checked to see if the insurance company has any policy when it comes to a drug showing that it is the only effective option? our insurance company would not cover one of ds's adhd meds, but we found out that if we paid for a one month trial of the meds and the doctor documented it was the only/best treatment the insurance company would at least cover a portion of it (our normal meds cost a $5 co-pay, this would have been a $25 co-pay but that was much less than us buying it outright).

you might call your pharmacist-since you are looking at 2 different medications there could be differences in the way they are formulated. so while going from 5 mg to 20 mg in one would no way happen, going from 5 mg to 20 mg in another may not be that huge a change (i've had to change brands/types of meds myself and the dosage would increase/decrease wildly-but the doctor said it was the way it was formulated-10 mg for one drug was equivilet to 20 mg in another).

 

[tiggerlover]

Will your insurance cover Adderall XR? DS started on Adderall 5mg at 8, but didn't show any real results until we put him on Adderall XR 10mg. which gave him what he needed.

 

[summerrluvv]

Will your insurance cover Adderall XR? DS started on Adderall 5mg at 8, but didn't show any real results until we put him on Adderall XR 10mg. which gave him what he needed.

No, unfortunately they won't. They cover the generic version of Adderall.

Thanks Christine..that makes sense. I know that his 5mg wears off in a few hours, and I wasn't thinking sustained means it gradually takes effect. Thanks for the replies and we'll see how he does