Juliette,
Thank you for writing this.
What a journey, what sacrifice and what perseverance.
One of the treatments I watched two parents go through with their son, who was one of my students, was controversial at the time: fecal transplant therapy and they had to go to England to get it.
The boy had gone through several rounds of antibiotics as a young child, with no probiotic replacement therapy.
He started manifesting many of your daughter’s behaviors and so was placed on a SSRI and then antipsychotic treatment regimens: both at the same time.
As well, they too had their son on different psychotherapeutic approaches including Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
In short, like you, they had tried and were trying a multifaceted approach.
Then, research starting coming out about the direct connection with gut flora and mental health and what damage can be done to this important symbiosis by antibiotics, damage which can then be exacerbated by SSRI’s and Antipsychotics.
Most of the research was coming out of England, this was way back in 2011–12, so forgive me is this is old news.
Their son was not 100% better after treatment but he was significantly better.
The reason I’m responding to your story, which is testament to incredible parenting under duress, with this aside, is that too often when our children show signs of mental illness, we look to pharmaceutical regimens before looking to their microbiome or guts.
Lastly, my sister could have been saved if she had taken this treatment. And lamentably, so too could have been my mother. For my sister it was bipolar disorder, while for my mother it was c-difficile.
Here’s two more recent studies:
The microbiome and mental health — Journal of Psychiatry …
jpn.ca › wp-content › uploads › 2019/06
by VH Taylor — 2019 — Cited by 1
J Psychiatry Neurosci 2019;44(4). 219 … gut microbiome, especially as it pertains to mental illness. … ity of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) as a treatment.
and
Could fecal transplants help treat mental illness? — WHYY
https://whyy.org › segments › could-fecal-transplants-help-treat-mental-illn…
Sep 13, 2019 — Fecal transplants use donor stool to rehabilitate the recipient’s microbiome. … a radical new treatment for bipolar disorder: fecal transplant.
Thanks again for writing this,
Daryl