Bipolar Diagnosis Has Jumped In Young Kids: Study
49 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // January 15th, 2010 // 8:59 am
The number of children aged 2 to 5 who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed antipsychotics has doubled over the past decade, suggesting the practice is becoming more prevalent, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Reuters reports.
The data could play a role at the upcoming murder trials of the parents of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, who died of an overdose of mood-stabilizing meds in 2006, Reuters writes. A child psychiatrist, Kayoko Kifuji, diagnosed Riley with bipolar disorder and ADHD when she was 30 months old, and placed her on Depakote, an antiseizure med also used for bipolar disorder, and clonidine, a blood pressure med.
Prosecutors claim the parents deliberately overmedicated their daughter to subdue her. The couple say they were following Kifuji’s instructions and their daughter died of pneumonia. The doc was cleared but, as Reuters writes, the case has renewed debate about whether bipolar disorder can be diagnosed in very young children and the extent to which antipsychotics should be prescribed.
The issue, Reuters continues, was transformed by Joseph Biederman, a Harvard University child psychiatrist, who argued children could have the disorder at extremely young ages. He is credited with spearheading a big increase in the number of kids diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but was accused by a US Senator of failing to fully disclose payments from drugmakers. He wouldn’t speak to Reuters (background here).
The study author, Columbia University clinical psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, tells Reuters about 1.5 percent of all privately insured kids between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70 children, received some sort of psychotropic drug - an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant - in 2007. And about half are prescribed an antipsychotic - Lilly’s Zyprexa, Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal or AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, or about one in 3,000 2-year-olds, according to the stdy.
elmore
We look back with horror on the 19th century when people routinely used cocaine and heroin for medical purposes, even in children. I would bet that 100 years from now, people will be equally horrified by the use of depakote and clonidine in a toddler, and all similar stories. They horrify virtually anyone who hears them–so why does the practice continue?
Greg
elmore writes “horrify virtually anyone who hears them–so why does the practice continue?”
The answer is that outside of the parents and those others caring for the children, it’s difficult to imagine just how difficult it is to manage severe behavioral problems even in children. No parent wants his/her child on medications. No doctor wants to drug a kid up to subdue them. But the behavioral problems in bipolar can be so extreme, that often the choice is between using medication or calling DCFS to take the kid away. It’s heartbreaking for parents to see their beloved child have to take mind-altering medication, but usually they have tried everything else and are at the point of desperation. It’s easy to stand back and criticize these parents for being lazy or ill informed, and criticize these doctors for wanting to act like gangsta drug dealers, but look closer and you might find that the truth is far more tragic and that these people are making the best of horrible circumstances.
Evelyn Pringle
I wonder how much Greg gets paid to go around websites posting blogs full of crap like the one above.
The study should have looked at even younger kids because down in Florida, Medicaid records show infants less than a year of were given antipsychotics.
How many severe behavioral problems could a “beloved” infant have Greg?
The Reuters report itself is not accurate. Rebecca was on 3 drugs, Seroquel, Depakote and Clonidine, since she was 28 months old, not two.
Her sister and brother, 6 and 11 at the time of Rebecca’s death were kept on the same 3 drug cocktail for years, with all of it paid for by Medicaid.
How anyone reading the records in Riley case, could conclude that these three little kids were justifiably drugged for years because they were mentally ill after knowing about their dysfunctional family life, their role models, and the environment they were stuck in, is beyond belief.
kimbriel
Oh wow, it’s so hard for the poor adults to care for the children. It’s so so so hard. These children are just obviously suffering from Seroquel and Depakote deficiencies. It’s like insulin for diabetes, doncha know?
Josh
Not sure how they can tell bipolar in a 2 year old….
harpy
Thank you, Evelyn. My reply was unprintable.
kimbriel
I have that problem a lot, harpy.
Woeful
Given the partial list of lead in toys, mercury and aluminum in vaccinations, bisphenols in plastic baby bottles, sodium polyacrylate in disposable baby diapers, latex and more bisphenols in pacifiers, pesticides in food and cotton, zinc oxide for diaper rash, chlorine in water, whatever the hell is in sunscreen, bug repellents, lindane and malathion for lice, and flame retardants in sleepers and mommy’s bed clothes too …before you ask whether parents smoke cigarettes — it’s fair to say the behavior disorder diagnostic nightmare perpetrated on children, parents and entire families is a whole lot more about neurotoxicity than it ever was about psychiatry.
Evelyn Pringle
Your welcome Harpy. I often have to work hard to get my comments down to a printable form when it comes to the issue of drugging kids for profit.
Elmore is correct when he says people react in horror when they hear these stories, but you’d be surprised how many people know nothing about this issue.
A story will make a headline or two on one day and that’s it. For instance, I tried to find another site with the Reuters story because it didn’t have a link for me to put it on facebook, and there were no more headlines until Ed posted it.
Most people I tell about the drugging of kids find it unbelievable to the point that I’ve already had to bring up records on my computer to prove it.
Like the infants being drugged at less than a year old in Florida. I’ve had to pull that one up several times and send it to people.
And we know it’s not just going on in Florida, they just happen to have reports available on the internet. But then Florida has been putting out reports for several years already and nothing really changes.
I’m to the point that I’m beginning to seriously doubt that anything can be done to stop these legal drug pushers and rise in the numbers for the age groups being drugged keep getting younger every year.
Laurie
NJ has the same age children on antipsychotics, documented in the Medicaid numbers.
The “bipolar” diagnosis is increasing because parents have gotten the message about antidepressants and won’t allow their children to take them…sadly, they are now buying the “bipolar” label and using drugs more dangerous than the ssri’s. A moody two year old isn’t bipolar…they are TWO!
M Helm, MD
Dr. Olfson has done some useful, interesting, and informative work with administrative claims databases. The important thing to remember about this work is that Dr. Olfson is telling us of an increase in the REPORTING of a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and an increase in the prescribing and dispensing of potent psychoactive medications in young persons.
This does not mean that the conditions reportedly ascribed to the patient are correct. In fact, to my knowledge, the good people who prepare the diagnostic and statistical manual have not established diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder in preschoolers. In other words, these preschoolers are being given a diagnosis which is not valid for their age.
The oopularity of “pediatric bipolar disorder” is a consequence of Biederman’s unproven, and unstudied suggestion that ADHD in children bears some resemblance to bipolar disorder. Uncritical acceptance of this idea has lead by extension and extrapolation to use of seizure medications (Depakote, topirimate), newer antipsychotics (risperidone and aripiprazole - cheifly in my area) to be used in increasingly young children.
An alternative hypothesis for the challenges of some of the most ill-behaved pre-schoolers is that impaired/inadequate sleep (which has many causes - GI problems, asthma, eczema, failure to understand the need for and appropriate duration of sleep, unsafe/threatening home environments, etc), parent-child conflict, lack of structure, ineffective/inconsistent discipline (which must be tailored to the child), adverse (and unrecognized) effects of other medications and history of trauma/abuse also results in similar behavioral disturbances.
No doubt some (even very young) children have significant psychopathology. But,common things being common, these children are much rarer than 1 in 70. There are likely many other explanations and contributing factors which are not explored because there is such emphasis placed on medical clinic through-put and therefore reliance on medication over critical evaluation of root causes of behavior. Truly if you take any 2-5 year old and deprive them of sleep they will very often be unmanageable with rapid shifts in mood, prone to tantrums and violent outbursts.
What scares me about this is that parenting skills used to be passed from generation to generation, and there used to be more than only the parents involved in raising a child. We are losing the database of experience, and increasingly turning instead to medical intervention. What kind of parents for future generations will treating toddlerhood and preschool years as a pathologic condition for 2% of the population bring about in 20 years?
Dr Olfson and company have again shed more light on a trend we should all critically evaluate.
kimbriel
It’s also a big barrel of laughs that people w/ these diagnoses are mysteriously dying 25 years earlier than the average person (excluding suicide)… Given all of this, I just can’t understand why it would be a bad idea to give toddlers these medicines. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Maybe they should start making formula-flavored Abilify.
JaT
I predict that the practice of medicine is going to become so untrustworthy that people will, once again, start dying of natural disease.
Evelyn Pringle
That will probably be the case with me. After investigating the medical industry for so many years, I would have to believe I had a deadly disease before I’d go to any doctor.
And that’s sad really because I know there are some honest folks still out there but the barrels of bad apples have tarnished the whole profession.
I haven’t been to a doctor since 2002.
Mencken
Haven’t been to a doctor in 8 years? Thanks, Evelyn for doing your part to keep health care costs down. Or can you not afford it on a blogger’s salary? Maybe you don’t get healthcare benefits like legitimate journalists get
Sayonara, doc
Menchen, didn’t you mean to say Evelyn has not added to the cost of life-threatening drugs responsible for the injury and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people world-wide? And, also, the life-threatening drugs designed to alleviate the pain and suffering caused by these life threatening drugs?
Evelyn Pringle
I don’t know who Mencken is but his remark sound liked a sly one with the term “legitimate journalist?”
I make my living as an investigative journalist and researcher, I don’t get paid for blogging.
The cost is not what keeps me from going to doctors. After investigating the medical industrial complex for nearly 6 years straight, I don’t trust the medical profession, pure and simple.
When I went to a doctor in 2002, he put me on Lipitor and I got serious side effects that I didn’t even realize where caused by the drug until I was assigned to investigate and report on statins 3 years later.
Thank God I had decided to go off Lipitor and start eating a bowl of cheerios a day to lower my cholesterol or I might be crippled and disabled today.
Of course it helps that I’m healthy as a horse and rarely even get so much as a sniffle. But if I ever do get really sick, through my work, I know enough uncorrupted doctors that I could contact.
kimbriel
The next time I go to a doctor will be when my only other choice is the morgue.
lipiddoc
Evelyn, I hope that your cholesterol was not too high to begin with. Those Cheerios will only lower it by about 7%, and a lot of bowls necessary to do it. I’ve exposed a few health care “benefits” in my time as well. It was once recommended that grapefruit (i.e. fibtre) can do the cholesterol-lowering trick too. The only hitch was that you had to eat about 40 lbs/day to get the needed effect.
Evelyn Pringle
Must not have been high because I’m just fine. But then I probably never needed Lipitor to begin with, now that I think back and knowing how Pfizer got so many doctors to push that drug.
Evelyn Pringle
One more thing. A 77 year old friend of mine was put on a statin last year and it made her sick as a dog for months. I told her to get off it and go to eating cheerios or oatmeal every day and her cholesterol went right down.
Trust me, legal drug pushing is no longer a very lucrative career in my circle of friends.
chirofriend
Agree, Evelyn. A good friend of mine is a chiropractor. He frequently sees patients with muscle disease due to statins. A patient recently went into renal failure due to rhabdomyolysis from statins.
Evelyn Pringle
I had that rhabdomyolysis real bad in my right arm and never put it together with the Lipitor. I told myself it must be arthritis setting in and I’d just have to live with it. I was also losing my voice to the point that I was almost convinced that I had throat cancer.
When I went off the Lipitor, they both went away but I didn’t put it together with going off the drug. I just all of a sudden realized one day that my arm didn’t hurt anymore and at some point that it was no longer difficult to talk and the hoarseness was gone.
My very hard of hearing best friend had gotten new hearing aides in both ears and I told her it was a good thing because I had been losing my voice from talking to her all the time.
As I said, I didn’t find out that these were side effects of Lipitor until years later when I got an assignment to investigate statins. I could hardly believe it, especially the throat problem.
JaT
If you gave Evelyn a hard time… you might be a Tony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xez2n371MTo
Salmon
I’d like to expand on Dr. Helm’s comments on the prevalence of significant psychopathology in childhood requiring the use of antipsychotics. I think it might also put in perspective the arguments of those who point out that there is for some a real need.
There are some children who have such blatent psychopathology that using antipsychotics is really a last ditch effort. However these are few and far between. For example it’s likely that most of us (including psychiatrists) have never been exposed to young profoundly mentally retarded and/or autistic children with IQ’s in the 30s who constantly hurt themselves for example by slamming their heads against the floor. These children are typically institutionalised and the alternative (or additive) is physical restraint. Even so we really don’t have good data on if the drugs really work.
Howevere in all honesty the debate of use of antipsychotics in children is not in these children. It’s in children who are much less severely effected.
The most severely ill institutionalized really add up to no more than a handful per state yet private health insurance and medicaid figures put the numbers of children being medicated at 1% and 4% respectively. For Medicaid this is greater than the % of adults with schizophrenia and bipolar 1 disorder who might benefit. So it’s clear that there’s a gross amount of overprescribing.
These numbers include children down to 5 years old and since you expect the cases to be rarer and rarer as you go younger and since the drug companies claim that not even all adolescents who should be treated are (i.e. ~ 0.1% - 0.2% of the population). Then clearly the only way to obtain these numbers (1% - 4%) is to have a huge percentage of young children younger than 12 years of age on these meds. (This is confirmed when you look at the data by age which shows about half the pediatric usage is in the under 12 age group.)
Information presented at recent FDA advisory committee meeting indicate that schizophrenia is so uncommon in children less than 15 years that it’s almost unheard of, and is about 0.1% from 15 - 18 yo. As for bipolar illness 0.3% develop initial symptoms between 13 and 18 years yet the severity isn’t sufficient to make a diagnosis in the majority for at least 8 years on average, i.e. when patients actually have a manic attach (which even then may not be severe enough to justify antipsychotics).
Over the past several years there has been a push to identify children who become ‘agitated’ on methyphenidate (for ADHD) as possibly having bipolar disorder. This has resulted in class warnings in labeling for ADHD drugs. However an FDA advisory committee held in 2005 which looked at this used a definition of agitation not as psychotic agitation (which might truly be a predictor) but any irritability (which might only mean overdosage). All told in post marketing reports there was only around 70 cases of any ‘agitation’. FDA analysis revealed that the vast majority were plain irritability and occurred in very young children who were started on extremely high dosages, most others were in children who had been stabilized but whose dosages were then increased (also an indication of overdosage). There was only 1 good case of psychotic agitation with a low subtherapeutic initial dose and this was in an 18 year old and so this 1 case of inducement of possible psychotic agitation (indicating a possible propensity toward mania or schizophrenia) was not even in a pediatric patient.
Followup analysis by Andy Mosholder of the FDA (the reviewer who revealed suicidality with antidepressants)revealed and incidence of irritability in around 1% of young patients (6 - 12 yo) with ADHD. If we take the incidence of ADHD at 4% this results in being able to induce a possible indicator of mania in 0.04% of children (i.e. 1 in 2500). Even so inducing a possible indicator does not mean that the psychopathology rises to the level indicating the need for antipsychotics (i.e. acute mania with psychotic features).
I am not saying that the use of antipsychotics in young children is never needed. However the numbers indicate the appropriate usage for pediatric bipolar might be on the order of 1 in 25,000 whereas the actual usage of antipsychotics is at least greater than 1 in 100 and up to 1 in 25 in the Medicaid population, i.e. possibly 1000 fold higher than it should be.
Salmon
Evelyn Pringle
Of course there is going to be the rare child, and I mean rare, who may need antipsychotics. I am not of the belief that there is no such thing as mental illness even in children.
But before they start drugging an infant or a toddler I want to see 10 expert opinions.
The report on Medicaid in Florida had 115 kids under 5 with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
How disgusting is it to label infants and toddlers for life with such a serious mental illness obviously to justify prescribing antipsychotics?
patrons99
Evelyn: yes, it is disgusting to label infants and toddlers for life. The medical records (including complete vaccination records) of those 115 kids under 5 really ought to be reviewed posthoc (retrospectively). It doesn’t pass the smell test. Similarly, for bipolar and ADHD infants and toddlers. Those diagnoses in that age group need to be formally investigated. There’s something very wrong here.
patrons99
Is the problem nationwide? or just Florida? I recall Ed’s post about a Miami doc who wrote 97,000 scripts for antipsychotics to Medicaid recipients in Florida. Even if he had a bionic hand (as blogger Lee Majors suggested), that’s an outrageous number of scripts. I hope the 115 kids that Evelyn refers to are included in Senator Grassley’s investigation.
The thought of giving potent psychotropics to infants and toddlers for personal financial gain, as opposed to medical necessity, is horrific. What are the regulators doing about these problems in Florida? e.g., the Florida State Medical Board and the Florida Attorney General? Why has this problem gotten so far out of control?
M Helm, MD
Patrons99,
Sadly, it is a national problem. I’ve seen reporting from Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Florida. I understand from other healthcare providers it is prevalent in other states as well. Per capita, Florida is not the worst for antipsychotic medication use in children either.
As for why the problem is so out of control, I can only speculate. Prescribing these medications was given a veneer of respectability through the efforts of manufacturers (particularly BMS which dropped samples to child and adolescent psychiatrists, pediatricians and family medicine physicians from the very launch of aripiprazole), so-called experts (Biederman and Co.) - also on the PhRMA dime, programs like TMAP in Texas (some of whose authors were paid PhRMA consultants), fear of special interests/NAMI backlash (funded by PhRMA in several states to create legislation framed as “open access” laws to compel Medicaid programs to provide any psychiatric medication at any dose to any patient for any purpose), lack of appropriate controls to prevent children in state custody from being excessively medicated, and a general avoidance of “questioning the doctor” about why these medications would be used in toddlers, preschoolers, grade school children as well as adolescents.
I’ve worked for more than 4 years on this problem in my state. We have made only minimal efforts at change. These include a consensus “maximum dose” per age limits, limitation on therapeutic duplication, and a prior authorization requirement for all children treated under age 5 or 6.
The last (prior authorization) requirement is pretty much a rubber stamp or a speed bump depending on how you look at it. Requests to treat preschoolers (or violate the other guidelines) are sent to MDs employed by the Division of Behavioral Health/State Hospital (who do not treat anyone under the age of 12). These are routinely approved (greater than 90% of requests granted for six to twelve months). I don’t yet know how the second (renewal) requests will be handled - it has not yet been long enough for a significant number to come up for review.
From the data I’ve examined, most kids do not stay on these medications very long - maybe a month or two for many. I don’t know why there is a high apparent discontinuation rate - possibly because parents/guardians see that these medications alter, but don’t help. Nevertheless, a significant number of kids are treated consistently for many months, usually with a complex and often contradictory set of medications and ever escalating doses. From time-to-time I see a kid or two like this in clinic, they are suffering from the toxicities of the medications they are recieving - sometimese the parent/guardian is concerned, sometimes not.
My well-trained and competent Child and Adolescent Psychiatry colleagues tell me that several years ago they noticed that their practices became upside down. They were discontinuing psychiatric medications (mostly antipsychotics) started by other providers more often than they themselves were starting any new medications. Most appalling in all of this is that apparently the majority of children treated with these medications do not appear to receive appropriate, supportive counseling for themselves and/or their families.
Your adjectives - disgusting, very wrong, outrageous, horrific - all seem appropriate to the current circumstance. God bless Ed, Gardiner Harris and all the others who bring these stories to press.
cliffintokyo
‘Lunar Park?’
Was this book intended to be a warning shot?
Did anyone take any notice?
patrons99
In many respects, the reality has become stranger than fiction, e.g. “V for Vendetta”, “The Constant Gardener”, “The Fugitive”. Why does the public seemingly tolerate daily outrages and horrors by Pharma and their legion of surrogates (shills)? This madness has become the status quo…and there is no end in sight. These are not Black Swan Events. There are no coincidences. The degree of control they exert over our lives is growing rapidly.
pharmavet
I would use the term serendipity rather than black swan events re pharmaceutical discoveries. However, I believe in what my Pathology Professsor said, that “chance favors the prepared mind”. In Pharma, this favors the rare combination of scientific acumen and marketing foresight. Best example is Dr. Roy Vagelos of Merck, one of the last scientist/CEO’S in Pharma. Dr. Vagelos understood that a number of disease states could be approached by enzyme inhibition, e.g. ACE inhibitors, statins, Proscar, etc. He also saw the marketing potential of these novel mechanistic drugs. A lesser figure than Vagelos (which is most Pharma CEO’s) would have not realized the potential of enzyme inhibitors, and we would still be stuck in the Dark Ages, treating high cholesterol with bile acid binding resins and treating hypertension with Rauwolfia alkaloids. BTW I was at GD Searle for one of those Black Swan events, the discovery of aspartame. Seems that one of the chemists got some on his finger. When he went to wet his finger to pick up a piece of paper, he noticied the sweet taste. I concede that one was pure serendipity.
patrons99
pharmavet: I was actually referring to the drug safety crisis, and the many outrages and horrors that belong to Pharma and are not in any way coincidental or serendipitous.
pharmavet
Patrons you mentioned “The Fugitive”, one of my favorite movies. I assume you remember the plot. As a pathologist, I know that in order for the culprits to have succeeded everyone involved in processing the liver biopsies, from the pathology resident who processed the tissue, to the technicians who prepared the microslides to the (paid-off) pathologist(Lentz I thin was the name of the character) would have to have been in the conspiracy. Somehow through this chain of command the slides would have to be switched and relabelled without anyone noticing. Pharma may be capable of some dastardly things, but you have to admit that that plat belongs in nthe realm of fiction rather than reality.
patrons99
pharmavet: O.K., but let’s be sure to add “dastardly” to our list of proper adjectives for pharma, along with horrific, outrageous,and disgusting.
kimbriel
I don’t even think these drugs are necessary all that time in Bipolar I. I have a Bipolar I diagnosis and I was never psychotic. I took the most expensive anti-psychotic out there for 10 months, when come to find out, a $20/month benzodiazepene would have done what I needed. And for Schizophrenia, the day that American psychiatrists have anywhere near as good of long term results as those in India (where drugs are used less than 4% of the time) then we can talk about how useful the drugs are.
Lisa Van Syckel
NJ Medicaid had 84 children under the age of 2 who had been prescribed antipsychotics. One 12 month old had been prescribed an antidepressant in combination with an antipsychotic. NJ has approx 39,000 children in the foster care program, yet their were 39,517 prescriptions for psychotropic meds in one month alone.
M Helm, MD
Lisa,
Interesting data. Did this result from an FOIA request? Were the 39,517 prescriptions for psychoactive medications limited only to the 39,000 foster children, or was this the total for the state. Seems a low number to me, but maybe things are better in NJ than here. Certainly, I know that things in FL are better than here also.
If that number is only for the foster care program children, then there are likely many more NJ children (not in foster care) also on these medicines. There was a study (I think from Texas) which showed that the risk of receiving antipsychotics was greater for foster care enrollees than those not in foster care. However, there is other evidence that indicates enrollment in Medicaid versus private insurance plans increases the risk of this kind of “treatment.” I’ve found that locally both of these findings are true.
Lisa Van Syckel
M Helm MD,.. Yes the data was obtained through NJ’s OPRA, and the numbers are only of Children in NJ’s Foster Care Program. I also have Docs, from NJ DCF, were antipsychotics are described as “novel treatments”. If you’d like, I would be more than happy to share the data. Contact can be made through Ed, and I will keep all correspondence confidential.
pharmavet
Lisa, given that this is supposed to be an “open” form, it is interesting that you mention a back channel through Ed Silverman through which confiddential data can be transferred back and forth. This seems strange to me given the spirit of the forum. Are these legally confidential data (subject to attorney client priviledge), proprietary/trade secret information, or just information you simply would rather not share with the rest of us?
Lisa Van Syckel
Actually Pharmavet,.. I love to share, and the data is not confidential, Laurie and I paid quite a few hundred dollars to get it, so, If Ed is willing, I would be more then happy to give it to him so he can post it here on Pharmalot,.. “for all to see”.
Lisa Van Syckel
Pharmavet, quick note.. I, like you Im sure, would prefer to keep your email address private, just like your identity, so, keeping that in mind, I extend to you the same offer I gave the good Dr. H.
Lisa Van Syckel
And, unlike other data, the NJ record lists the names of the Physicians, their medical license number, and the County they practice in, along with the age of the child, and the name of the drug. This data, if made public, could be quite embarrassing for some.
elmore
All these comments are very interesting and certainly thought provoking. One thing that interested me was how small children could be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I looked for lists of symptoms, here are some.
What really worries me is how many of these are traits of childhood, and how anybody could decide that a 2-year old with any of these–bossiness? silliness? is anything beyond a 2-year old.
Very Common Symptoms of Early-Onset Bipolar Disorder
Separation anxiety
Rages & explosive temper tantrums (lasting up to several hours)
Marked irritability
Oppositional behavior
Frequent mood swings
Distractibility
Hyperactivity
Impulsivity
Restlessness/ fidgetiness
Silliness, goofiness, giddiness
Racing thoughts
Aggressive behavior
Grandiosity
Carbohydrate cravings
Risk-taking behaviors
Depressed mood
Lethargy
Low self-esteem
Difficulty getting up in the morning
Social anxiety
Oversensitivity to emotional or environmental triggers
Common Symptoms of Early-Onset Bipolar Disorder
Bed-wetting (especially in boys)
Night terrors
Rapid or pressured speech
Obsessional behavior
Excessive daydreaming
Compulsive behavior
Motor & vocal tics
Learning disabilities
Poor short-term memory
Lack of organization
Fascination with gore or morbid topics
Hypersexuality
Manipulative behavior
Bossiness
Lying
Suicidal thoughts
Destruction of property
Paranoia
Hallucinations & delusions
MomofThreeBoys
Unless you have parented a drug or alcohol exposed infant, I suggest all the naysayers take a back seat. I come from a family of several adopted children, some from birth and some as older children. I was adopted as an older child. And I have adopted a meth baby myself, that child is now six years old.
Life can literally be hell with a drug or alcohol exposed child. It is difficult to discuss this with friends and peers, because most people will usually dismiss what you say with, “Oh, boys will be boys,” or “Just wait, they will grow out of it,” “Maybe you don’t discipline them enough” or “Sounds like they are looking for attention.”
I don’t care about medical research or what a doctor or parent might say. I know what is best for my child. There ARE parents who medicate and overmedicate their children due to lack of parenting skills and structure, and they are too lazy to apply appropriate boundaries and discipline. However, most of the people I know who have medicated their children have legitimate reasons to do so, and I feel they would actually be remiss if they did not supply the adequate medical care that child needs.
Continually banging your head on the wall, hurling yourself against a shower door when your parent showers, slamming a telephone on the tile and breaking it when your parent is on a phone, waking a parent up by headbutting them, ripping a text book to pieces in front of a kindergarten teacher are not normal temper tantrums and should be dealt with appropriately with a treatment team (behavior and medical) who specializes in such behaviors.
If you have never had a small child viciously throw a family pet into a pond, threaten to burn down the neighbors’ homes, threaten to stab a caller who is taking your parent’s time away, smears feces on kitchen cabinets, urinates on kitchen counters, and gets pissed at their friend’s friend by threatening repeatedly to kill them and shoot them through the heart, then keep your judgements to yourself.
Yes, children CAN be diagnosed at very early ages. I have not had to medicte my children as infants, but in looking back at some of my child’s infant behavior, I would not be surprised if there are children and toddlers who need medication.
Lisa Van Syckel
Mom of three boys, Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, that the side effects of the medications increase violent behaviour in children, and are you aware that their are no safety or efficacy studies on polypharmacy in children available.
I put no valdity in what you have to say, and if you want some respect..try using your real identity when posting comments.
This Mom, will be forever grateful, to the parents, and reporters of press and Media. Keep the judgements coming… lives will continue to be saved
Lisa Van Syckel
Pharmavet, No response to my post, Then I will assume that you enjoy listening to the tune of your own horn.
pharmavet
Lisa, I don’t like to toot my own horn. But I have fallen in love with reading my own posts. Seriously, after 28 years in Pharma, about five of which were spent marking all of in-house my memo’s “Subject to Attorney-Client Priviledge”, I try and steer away from issues involving confidentiality. Just watched “The Insider” the other night, the story of Dr. Jeff Wigand, who blew the whistle on the tobacoo industry and violated his confidentiality agreement with tobacco giant Brown & Williamson in the process. Although a hero to many, Wigand paid a heavy personal price for his actions.
JaT
My latest concern is that people are willing to allow their children to be labeled with diseases of the brain or mind at all.
They know not what they do.
Re: elmore’s list:
Same thing with ADHD. Put every possible childhood behavior on a list to create a blanket disease. Can’t have anything that shows energy, developing individualty, intelligence.
Do psychiatrists treat with anything other than drugs?