A came across a blog written by a psychologist that spoke to me. He was writing about a training he went to on childhood bipolar. When I was working in an inpatient facility for youth I was shocked at how many kids came into my facility with a diagnosis of bipolar, even though they did not meet the diagnostic criteria and clearly had other issues going on. I have previously written on the controversy of bipolar disorder and its diagnosis in childhood.
What got me about the blog was that this psychologist was bringing to light some concerns that many in the field have. First is that the majority of research on this topic is provided by only a few research teams. This certainly can lead people to question the motivation of the researchers. The second issue is even bigger – one particular researcher has two controversies surrounding him regarding medications. One was related to receiving money from pharmaceutical companies and another is related to using powerful anti-psychotic medications on children before there were studies conducted on the medications use in children.
I found these issues important to note because more and more children are being diagnosed with bipolar, even though they don’t meet the established criteria. This has led to the possibility of a new diagnosis being added to the next version of the diagnosis manual: Temper Dysregulation Disorder. This would be for children who have severe tantrums frequently, with signs of anger or irritability. Kids with these typos of problems are being labeled bipolar, and there could be many other issues contributing to the problem.
The author of the blog also notes that no one at the conference was discussing environment or parenting, or anything other than biology as the reason for the behavioral problems. I highly recommend reading the blog here, and ask lots of questions if someone wants to diagnose your child with bipolar disorder.