It is with the greatest trepidation that we begin on the journey of changing psychiatrist. We’ve been quite happy with the psychiatrist we are currently using for over a year now, so why would we consider changing? My daughter is turning eighteen very soon and will be transitioning to independent living. The psychiatrist we currently use is fifty miles away, so each time we go we have to make a hundred mile round trip. With the current price of gas she doesn’t feel that she can afford to make that trip.

There are very few doctors who will accept her insurance which is Medicaid. Currently in our city there are only two psychiatrists who accept Medicaid and one of those was her previous doctor who was determined to keep her on Lithium. We kept asking him to change her medication because we didn’t feel it was controlling her disorder. He was determined that Lithium was the correct medication for her and just kept increasing it until he had her on 1400 milligrams a day. Periodically he would try to add an additional medication to go along with it, but that never seemed to have the desired effect. Like the time he decided to add Abilify and after just two weeks of taking the medication her anger was so out of control that we ended up having her arrested.

We feel that she has been pretty stable over the past year while taking Risperdal and Neurotin twice a day as well as Zoloft once a day so we aren’t looking to change medications just doctors to prescribe the medication. We are patiently waiting for our referral to our new psychiatrist, which is currently in its fifth week of processing. Since both doctors are employed by the same organization we have a 50/50 chance of getting the Lithium doctor back again. We are desperately hoping to either get the other doctor, whom we know nothing about, or to be able to convince the Lithium doctor to continue her current medication. Sigh!

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