The Dangers of Drugging Children...

I happened to catch the following show on 60 minutes a few weeks ago:

On Dec. 13, 2006, police responded to a 911 call and found a little girl lying dead on the floor next to her parents' bed. The autopsy revealed that she had died from an overdose of psychiatric drugs. Rebecca Riley was being treated for bipolar disorder, or manic depression, even though she was just four years old. If that sounds unusual to you, it's not.

As Katie Couric reports, until recently the disorder was believed to emerge only in adults. Now, it is estimated that there are nearly one million children diagnosed as bipolar, making it more common than autism and diabetes combined. And to treat it, doctors are administering some medications that have yet to be approved for children. In the case of Rebecca Riley, that cocktail of medications proved fatal and now her parents have been charged with her murder. Here's a transcript of a 60 minutes show with Katie Couric about overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in children. It features an interview with a mother who is currently awaiting trial after her 5 year old daughter died from a combination of drugs used to treat bipolar adults.

Go here to see the transcript.

I do believe the mother over mediated her child, but why were these powerful drugs in her hands, and prescribed for a 5 year old, no less? If you watch the video, pay close attention to the the checklist they use to diagnose children with bipolar disorder. Things like "mood swings" and "craves sweets..." What 2 year old doesn't fit the criteria?

Here's another article from the LA times that I heard about on a local radio station:

Bipolar Disorder in Youths May be Over-diagnosed

A new study says a fortyfold increase can be partly attributed to doctors mislabeling children and teens with the illness.

By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 4, 2007

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents has risen fortyfold since 1994, according to a study released Monday. But researchers partly attributed the dramatic rise to doctors over-diagnosing the serious psychiatric disorder.

The report in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry said bipolar disorder was found in 1,003 of every 100,000 office visits from children and adolescents in 2002-03, compared with 25 of 100,000 office visits in 1994-95.

The diagnosis of bipolar disorder among adults increased twofold during the same period, researchers said.

The study didn't investigate the reasons for the sudden rise in bipolar cases among children and adolescents. A book published in 2000, "The Bipolar Child," made the controversial assertion that one-third to one-half of children with depression had bipolar disorder.

Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatrist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and senior author of the latest study, said part of the increase was attributable to an under-diagnosis of bipolar disorder in the past.

But Olfson said another reason was the mislabeling of children and adolescents with aggressive or irritable behaviors as bipolar, an illness that is treated with powerful psychotropic medications, many of which have not been tested in children.

Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study, called the increase in bipolar diagnoses worrisome.

"The way the label is being used is probably a little exuberant -- not fitting with the strict definition of the illness," Insel said. The disorder "is probably not as common as the very high rates we're seeing."

Read the article in its entirety here.

I find it sad what we are doing to children in the name of early intervention and treatment. The same psychiatrists who have sold us on their faulty, humanistic parenting methods are now lining their pockets and those of the pharmaceutical companies by convincing us to drug our children. Again I say it's nothing short of child abuse.