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Bipolar Disorder Becomes Epidemic

Bipolar Disorder Becomes Epidemic - When a young child's behavior problems go beyond mere toddler tantrums, parents face bleak choices about how to treat them. Should they seek psychiatric or psychological help? Should the child be put on medication or some other behavioral treatment? Should he or she be labeled with a psychiatric illness like bipolar disorder?

Slate had a compelling look at the question this week, which, unlike many previous articles on the topic, does not reduce parents who seek treatment to gullible victims of fad diagnoses who simply want to drug away any sign of individuality in their children. (More on Time.com: Special — Kids and Mental Health).

Writer Darshak Sanghavi notes that the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder emerged about a decade ago and has since been given a nod of acceptance by the mainstream medical establishment.

Unfortunately, drug companies looking to increase sales have used parents' desperation very much to their advantage, and their strategy has been especially successful given the backdrop of a fragmented health system with a chronic shortage of child psychiatrists and little insurance coverage for psychological or behavioral therapies that don't carry the risk that medications do. (More on TIME.com: Mind Reading: Carl Elliott on the Dark Side of Medicine).

Bioethicist Carl Elliott recently also told me that the rise in bipolar diagnoses has contributed to a huge spike in the sales of antipsychotic medications. "Bipolar is the big one here," he said. "Now, everybody's got it. It used to be rare, but you can chart the rise, and it goes up with the introduction of 'atypical' antipsychotics."

Bipolar Disorder Becomes Epidemic
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