Children as Young as 4 Diagnosed with Bi-Polar

Canadians and Ontarians. Don't be smug about our psychiatric system. Canada has no national mental health strategy. Many within the mental health system, including many psychiatrists and nurses abuse individuals just as much as they do in the United States, diagnosing without evidence based tests to support their use of psychotropic drugs. Very few mental health physicians do research on the etiology of mental illness. It's usually "their" perception based on outdated DSM criteria and unethical tests which are mostly semantics reported by the patient, not the physician following historical data that they are to legally bound to inquire ethically into with consent under s. 15 of the Ontario Mental Health Act.

From the Alliance For Human Research Protection:

A report in The Wall Street Journal should raise serious concerns about the legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosing and drug prescribing for children.

The Journal reports that close to 20,000 US children are being diagnosedwith bi-polar disorder, a condition that had, until recently been very rareaccording to responsible child psychiatrists.

"The number of children diagnosed as bipolar rose 26% from 2002 to 2004, to19,776 cases" according to patient records kept by health-care information company NDC Health Corp.

"Increased use of antipsychotic medicines, such as Seroquel and Risperdal, was a big driver of pediatric drug costs last year, according to pharmacy-benefit manager Medco Health Solutions Inc.

"Yet, the Journal reports that a heated debate is brewing between two camps of powerful child psychiatrists--all of whom are proponents of psychotropic drugs.

Leading child psychiatrists disagree about whether children should even have to meet the diagnostic threshold for a diagnosis of bipolar beforebeing prescribed some of the most powerful mind altering psychotropic drugson the planet.

Their decisions may irrevocably harm children.

Bipolar disorder is a severe, disabling psychiatric condition broadlydefined in the diagnostic bible of psychiatry--the DSM IV.

To meet the diagnostic criteria for bipolar in adults, patients must exhibit: Inflatedself-esteem or grandiosity; Decreased need for sleep; Increased or pressuredspeech; Flight of ideas/racing thoughts; Distractibility; Increased goal-directed activity; Risk-taking behavior--"bipolar disorder causespeople to cycle between manic, euphoric highs and crushing, depressive lowsthat last a week or more."

Presumably, a psychiatrist prescribing powerful mind-altering drugs to a patient meeting those symptoms would be justified.

The drugs prescribed for bipolar disorder are the so-called 'atypical antipsychotics'--including Risperdal (risperidone), Zyprexa (olanzapine),Seroquel (quetiapine).

These drugs have not been approved for children.

Neither were they approved initially for bipolar disorder in adults.

These antipsychotics were at first approved only for schizophrenia--the most severe, debilitating psychiatric disorder in which psychosis, hallucinations, hearing voices, are the core symptoms, affecting 1% of the population..

Unfathomably, these powerful--and harmful--psychotropic drugs have beome blockbuster sellers, enriching Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and BristolMyers Squibb, while producing diabetes in more than 30% of youth.

Since doctors diagnosing children disagree about the basis for diagnosing and treating children, their practice method may be legitimately characterized as child abuse with chemical restraints.

Psychiatry's rather broad diagnostic criteria were established by a group of leading psychiatrists.

Therefore, current efforts to lower those standards--both interms of prevalence (quantity) and severity (quality) of the symptoms, is a radical departure from psychiatry's own standards such as they are: "A bipolar child can flip between a high and low several times a day.

There also is disagreement over what constitutes the highs, with some doctors saying the manic phase in children often reveals itself as extreme rages, violence and emotional outbursts, rather than the traditional euphoria."

The push by an influential group of child psychiatrists at Harvard may lie at the root of what is an epidemiological mystery: what disaster can account for the staggering number of children beingdiagnosed with bipolar disorder?

It appears that the most radical of child psychiatrists who recommend prescribing antipsychotics for children are at Harvard. They are pressuringthe profession to prescribe antipsychotics for children --even without the criteria establshed by their profession, and even in the knowledge that the risks of harm for children are irrevocable.

Parents need help from Congress to stop the abuse.

Parents and health care public policy makers have a right to demand from state licenced medical professionals that they adhere to evidence-based medicine: what constitutes a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis in children?

What constitutes a scientifically valid diagnosis of bipolar disorder inchildren?

Clearly, it is not in a child's best interst to be exposed to powerful drugs that alter brain function on the basis of "vague" symptoms of attention derficit hyperactivity (ADHD).

How can a drug approved for a very small group of very disabled patients, become Eli Lilly's best selling drug?