THERE'S a children's picture book in the US called Brandon and the Bipolar Bear. Brandon and his bear sometimes fly into unprovoked rages. Sometimes they're silly and overexcited. A nice doctor tells them they are ill, and gives them medicine that makes them feel much better.
The thing is, if Brandon were a real child, he would have just been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Also known as manic depression, this serious condition, involving dramatic mood swings, is increasingly being recorded in American children. And a vast number of them are being medicated for it.
The problem is, this apparent epidemic isn't real. "Bipolar emerges from late adolescence," says Ian Goodyer, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge who studies child and adolescent depression. "It is very, very unlikely indeed that you'll find it in children under 7 years."
...
"There's a societal push for conformity in all ways," he said. "There's less tolerance of difference. Maybe for some people having a label confers a sense of hope - previously I was laughed at but now I can talk to fellow sufferers on the internet."
...
On the night of 13 December 2006, in Boston, Massachusetts, 4-year-old Rebecca Riley had a cold and couldn't sleep. Her mother, Carolyn Riley, gave her some cold medicine, and some of her bipolar medication, and told her she could sleep on the floor next to the bed. When she tried to wake Rebecca the next morning, she discovered her daughter was dead.
The autopsy revealed that Rebecca's parents had given her an overdose of the antipsychotic drugs she had been prescribed for her bipolar disorder. They had got into the habit of feeding her the medicines to shut her up when she was being annoying. They were both convicted of Rebecca's murder.
Rebecca had been diagnosed as bipolar at 2-and-a-half, and given medication by an upstanding psychiatrist who was a fan of Biederman's research into childhood bipolar. Rebecca had scored high on the DSM checklist, even though like most toddlers she could barely string a sentence together.
Shortly before her trial, Carolyn Riley was interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes show by Katie Couric:
KC: Do you think Rebecca really had bipolar disorder?
CR: Probably not.
KC: What do you think was wrong with her now?
CR: I don't know. Maybe she was just hyper for her age.
Check out the full, unabridged article at this link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028151.900-bipolar-kids-victims-of-the-madness-industry.html?full=true
...But god-forbid you refuse the "doctor's orders" and decide not to give your kid these dangerous drugs. What happens then...?
Police force children to take drugs at gunpoint
And meanwhile, scientists are coming up with ever-more efficient methods of getting these drugs into your system...
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