Our daughter sees a psychiatrist who prescribed meds. We were not able to find anybody that had treated SM before. Our daughter is 37 lb. She was put on Zoloft because the doc thought it to be the “cleanest” of the choices. She started at 12.5 mg/day for 1 week, then 25mg/day for 3 wk. Now she has moved up to 50mg/day. I wonder what you think of this dosage given her weight and age (5). We really haven’t noticed much of a change yet, although I think she is talking louder in front of other people, but only to the people she normally talks to. If this dose is OK, how long would we keep her on it before we might see her talk to someone new? Thank you, we do so appreciate your input.

Answer

Personally, I do think this is a lot of medication for a small child. I do not prescribe as aggressively as this doctor did. You also need to do some behavior modification along with the medication. Since many of these kids have been mute for most of their lives, many are pretty set in their ‘mute’ ways. My recommendation would be to instigate positive reinforcement (such as stickers), encouraging verbalization with store clerks, waitresses, etc. You need a good behavior approach to complement the medication.

Dr. Elisa Shipon-Blum