Hi marge,
Just wanted to say "Welcome". I'm sorry to read that your son is having such a difficult time right now.

I've no personal experience at all with Abilify so can't really help too much. I have read a few reports from people saying it helped them. One friend though had increase in their OCD while taking it, but it helped her tics. 15mg seems high, but I'm no expert. I was just looking for dose info. and found TSA-USA newsletter where they mention doses of 5mg to 10mg. I'll go check on doses and post back if I find something important.

[A lot of the info. about Abilify gives doses for other conditions like Bipolar or Schizophrenia. The doses used for tics is usually much lower.]

I checked in PubMed in a couple of articles there and also on the TSA-USA site, but couldn't find anything too specific.

The doses used in one study were from 10mg to 20mg but the 11 patients varied in age from 7 to 50 years of age, so that's pretty large difference in size and weight. My son was pretty heavy while on the Risperdal so I guess if he'd gone onto Abilify he would have needed probably larger dose than some children his same age.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum

A case series of patients with Tourette's syndrome in the United Kingdom treated with aripiprazole.
Davies L, Stern JS, Agrawal N, Robertson MM.

"A case series of 11 consecutive patients with TS (age range 7-50 years; M = 7)

"The successful aripiprazole doses were between 10-20 mg daily."

__________

Just wondering if the Risperdal was tapered off or if the Abilify was added and the Risperdal ceased at the same time. What dose Risperdal was your son on when it was ceased?

When my son was on the Risperdal, he felt it helped him a lot for a while, but he also had increase in OC symptoms and the Risperdal seemed to hit a "wall" where it appeared to stop helping him with his tics altogether. His doctors wanting to keep upping the doses, and the dose was high enough. It's better to find the lowest dose for the maximum relief, then to tip the scales and go on a dose that is detrimental as far as side effects and cognitive blunting is concerned. Anyway, once he was finally tapered, and that wasn't at all easy to begin with, he went through some difficult weeks, but then really settled and has never taken anything since. That was around the age of 13 as well.

There is an older thread where some questions were asked about Abilify. I'm not sure if there's anything in there that is of help for you, but here's the thread... http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=3636
Experience with Abilify??

take care,
Lara