Bipolar children get a better chance
Between the 1990s and the mid 2000s, the number of American children suffering from bi-polar disorder increased by a massive 4,000%. This can either be seen as the medical profession finally waking up to situation that has been dogging children for many years, or alternatively dooming millions of children to adult lives with a very unhelpful medical label and the prescription of drugs that this implies.
Even if we are lucky enough to have stable employment and manage to pay our Aviva health insurance or what ever company we use, bi-polar disorder will probably have a debilitating effect on the lives of most who live with it. The diagnosis of pediatric bi-polar disorder was first popularized by Dr. Janet Wozniak, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She found that some children with ADHD had more profound issues than simply impulse control, and influenced mood.
The pediatric bi-polar disorder diagnosis meant bending the symptoms to fit the disease: Adult bi-polar is ‘episodic’, that is it lasts for weeks or months and then passes, while children’s ‘episodes’ might happen a few times a day. The evidence that children with this diagnosis grew up to be adult sufferers was also not conclusive. Despite these problems, the psychiatric profession became enamored with the diagnosis.
Now the American Psychiatric Association has decided to address the issue in it’s upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The manual was first published in 1952 and provides the criteria for the classification of mental disorders. The fifth edition of the manual, DSM-V, will include a new classification called temper dysregulation with dysphoria.
The new diagnosis has already come in for some criticism however. Allen Frances, writing for Psychology Today has said that this solution to the over diagnosis of children with bi-polar disorder is that “it is a makeshift proposal, with considerable risks, and a disqualifying conceptual problem.” Firstly the research into the new disorder is thin, secondly it might mean kids previously considered normal might now be diagnosed, and thirdly the disorder describes a single problem rather than a complete syndrome.
DSM-V is due to be published in May of 2013, so we have some time for the psychiatric community to come to a conclusion.
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