Should Kids Be Medicated for Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar Disorder in ChildrenI just read an article today about Bipolar Disorder in children about Judith Warner’s book on the subject. It seems that Judith Warner’s opinion is that Big Pharma actually has it right- children who seem to have the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder should be medicated.

As a person who has been medicated for Bipolar Disorder for several years, I think that is a pretty frightening prospect.

For one, diagnosing adults with Bipolar Disorder is difficult enough. In the past few years, it seems like there has been a significant increase in the amount of diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder. The problem from my eyes is that sometimes the diagnoses blur- the lines between Bipolar II and III are very tough to see as hypo-mania isn’t as easy to diagnose as psychosis. How can you truthfully say that a child has hypo-mania when the child is just hyper? How can a doctor honestly distinguish between ADHD (which has some correlation with Bipolar Disorder) and Bipolar II? For that matter, how does the doctor (who is probably not also a therapist or a nutritionist) actually know if the child is suffering because of problems in the home or even as a result of a poor diet?

Leaving that aside, let’s imagine for a minute that it’s easy to diagnose someone with Bipolar Disorder- how much medication should be given to a child? The current trend in Psychiatry is to hit Bipolar Disorder with a cocktail of medication, oftentimes a combination of anti-seizure medication such as Depakote along with an anti-psychotic such as Risperdal. None of these medications is without short-term side-effects and most of them have not  been tested for their long-term side-effects on the medication, largely because they haven’t been around long enough. As an adult, I was on Risperdal for a while and was literally drooling and lost my ability to concentrate, which would probably not be all that helpful for a child.

An adult is capable of making the decision to try out these medications and is usually informed of the risks, but children are not. I am definitely of the opinion that medication for children should be a last resort.  There are truthfully so many other factors that can cause children stress, which they then express by acting out- that does not always mean that they need to be medicated or that a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder is warranted.