Please, get a second opinion for the sake of your child. I am a psychiatric clinician and realize with this amount of weight loss, the obvious nutritional demands of the body, especially the brain, are lacking. Then, the child not only is presented with the challenge of delayed growth, weight loss, many times in this situation, you will see and observe the child demonstrating even worse behaviors, than prior to the medications, because directly, the brain is not attaining or being allowed to be fed the vital nutrients that it needs to function optimally. Then, you will observe, I know that I have seen and observed other peers of mine, will want to immediately increase the medication for some reason they will give, such as: becoming immune to the medication, so need to go up on the dose, want to add an additional stimulant to the child's regimen because the provider will use the excuse that the one drug is working, but not optimally any longer, so, we'll add another and the second will augment the first, compensate where the first one is lacking, or change to another stimulant saying that we'll give this one a try to see if it has the propensity to dull the appetite, as the other one did. Then, we will re-evaluate how it is performing in six months at your child's next visit. Well, by the time that the next visit happens, your the child has lost another ten pounds! First, it is not a bad idea to stop the medication, under the supervision of your medical provider, and re-assess if this type of intervention is even still a necessity and maybe has improved, not saying becomes perfect, but improved enough that he can function without having to take the medication. Of course, this is the optimal situation and should be one that all clinicians have as a goal for their client that that they can be functionable and meeting their daily responsibilities without dependent on a pill. Anyway, sorry for standing on my soap box! After a trial without the medication, what we call 'a med wash,' and child still necessitates some type of intervention, there are other medications, which are not stimulants, that could be utilized. The first non, stimulant ADHD medication, Strattera, works like an antidepressant, not quite as intrusive as the stimulants, not as likely to cause supression of the appetite and not as likely to cause weight loss. However, I have seen it cause weight loss just as the stimulant group; therefore, in those situations, the strattera is not any more beneficial than the stimulant was. When in a situation such as or similar to yours, as you have described above, using a medication from a different class, what is known as 'a second line ADHD medication' such as Wellbutrin SR or Buspar, with the Wellbutrin SR working particularly well. Of course, and not meant to be last, there are the talked about natural remedies, such as but not limited to, CLA, ALA, Omega and Essential Fatty Acids, DHA, Well balanced diet, DMAE, and others, of course these shoud be only utilized under the supervison of your medical clinician or checking prior with your pharmacist to ensure that there are not any interactions with anything that you maybe already taking. Several web sites that you may find helpful are the following; I use them a lot for references:
1. www.healing-arts.org
2. www.psyweb.com
3. www.drugs.com (has an excellent drug interaction checker)
4. www.doublecheckmd.com (another excellent drug interaction checker)
5. www.patient.co,uk
Hope that some or any of this part helps, good luck!