The Latest Fashion in Poor Parenting?
Posted by Pythia on September 4, 2007
Fresh off the presses of the New York Times: Bipolar Soars as Diagnosis for the Young
Move over ADHD, make room for the new catchall: Pediatric Bipolar.
What’s going on? Is it that parents (or adults in general) no longer know how to deal with difficult children? Or that the entire world is more mental than ever?
Parents don’t let their children have sugar or coffee or cigarettes or even softdrinks–why is a psychoactive drug that scares most adults ok?
I cannot imagine giving an eight-year-old a stimulant, much less lithium.
No one knows how these medications affect the adult brain, much less the still-developing child’s brain. There have been no studies of the long-term effects of any of these drug (except lithium–which is not generally given long-term because of the possibility of serious side-effects) on anyone–they’re too new.
Their follow-up article, which says much the same, but with more caveat, and mentions the POV that it’s just bad parenting:
Study Questions Some Bipolar Diagnoses
UPDATE: Try this to get the article. AP doesn’t like permalinks.
June said
I guess your six year old has never attempted suicide.
Probably never too depressed to get out of bed for a week either.
Ever met a hyper-sexual seven year old?
I guess we were repressing him.
Maybe we shouldn’t have stifled his desire to play chicken with the traffic, or to fly off the roof, either.
Please, spend a few hours at a school for emotionally-disturbed children. Talk to them. Talk to the parents who take turns sleeping so the children aren’t alone, who’ve given up careers to be on-call 24 hours a day, who have to explain to the world over, and over, and over again that their children deserve a chance to live full lives, no matter what the backlash.
Then get back to me.
pythia said
Thank you for your comment. I’m glad someone has something to say about the flip side. No, I don’t have children, since I’m not so sure it would be a good idea for me to try to raise a child.
What I was addressing is the pop-culture psychiatry that pervades our society today and is fostered by doctors and drug companies who are happy to give the people what they want because it makes them a profit. If your kid won’t behave, give him a pill.
I said that I couldn’t imagine giving a kid a psychoactive drug, for just the reason you give–I’ve never been in those situations. All I have with which to compare is my own experience as a child and what I have seen with what would be considered “mainstream” kids.
As a teacher in a very large suburban high school, I saw many, many middle-class children getting all the modifications (and medication) their parents wanted them to have, while the truly academically and emotionally needy, are thrown to the side. I know I will probably offend you again, but, while a generalization, seems to hold true most of the time.
I’ve never heard of a six-year-old trying to commit suicide; maybe that’s the sort of thing that should be in the media so that the white middle-class problem child is put into perspective. And the ignorant may be enlightened.
Again, thanks for the insight. I hope that you won’t mind pointing me in the right direction to learn more about the kids who do need treatment.
Pediatric Bipolar (or, Children on Drugs) « this is your brain on lithium said
[...] 4, 2007 Bipolar Illness Soars as a Diagnosis for the Young I made some comments on this one a while [...]