Well, if you trust them....
I don't know. I have disagreed with the psychiatrist before but kept giving the meds because I felt they were working at least a bit. Ritalin was a miracle drug for us. He started it at age 4, late in the year, he was almost 5. It was like night and day! We gave him half a pill before school. That was it.
Then when in Kindergarten he went to half a pill in the morning and half at lunch. He didn't even have to have an aid with him to corral him when he was in class. It was wonderful. He also was near the top of his class.
Then we moved. This school and this 1st grade teacher were horrible. We went up to a whole pill in the morning and half at lunch. He was acting out so badly that he would often have to come home by lunch time, wet, poopy, he was literally begging us to take him out of this class but he wasn't telling us there were problems. We just thought the meds weren't working.
We tried everything and once we decided to move him to another school the next year he was back to being great. His mom has him now and has taken him off all meds. I was sort of glad for her to see what she had done to him with her drug use while pregnant and I was glad to see him without any meds at all in him. I wondered, had been told by lots of parents, that one of the meds he was on had a side effect of aggressive behaviors. I was hoping that was what was causing some of his outbursts. It wasn't.
He got sent home day after day after day. He's doing okay now that his mom has him on a 24 hour ADHD med. Not nearly as well as the Ritalin but it works okay.
So if you want to see him off all meds please wait until Summer break. This way you will be the one home with him and as he weans off the meds starting in May you'll be the first one to notice changes. Then if you find he still needs some of the meds you can start him back up on them in August in preparation for the beginning of school next fall.