Bipolar

On Tuesday, NPR told the story of DeAngelo Cortijo. DeAngelo became a foster kid at age 3 after his mother attempted suicide. He was “diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder,” and was prescribed “a combination of antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants, and was told that taking them was his only hope of being normal.” Through equine therapy, DeAngelo was eventually able to get off all of his medication. Now, California is hoping to pass reforms that would prevent foster kids, like DeAngelo, from being “prescribed antipsychotic drugs at double to quadruple the rate of that not in foster care.”

The brains of adolescents diagnosed with bipolar disorder develop differently than the brains of teens without the disorder, according to a study in Biological...

The FDA has approved the atypical antipsychotic Saphris (asenapine) for use in children on the basis of one trial.

-Psychiatrists analyze why US bipolar diagnoses in children and adolescents increased 40 times over in less than 10 years.

It is generally recognized in antipsychiatry circles that antidepressant drugs induce manic or hypomanic episodes in some of the individuals who take them. Psychiatry's usual response to this is to assert that the individual must have had an underlying latent bipolar disorder that has "emerged" in response to the improvement in mood. The problem with such a notion is that it is fundamentally unverifiable.

"Always appending disorder to the word bipolar is akin to always appending accident to the end of automobile. In other words, saying 'bipolar disorder'...

Over one-third of young people who were treated for bipolar disorder developed schizophrenia within eight years, according to a study in Schizophrenia Research. In...

The British Journal of Psychiatry has issued a retraction of an article purporting to have identified evidence of the epigenetic aspects of bipolar disorder,...

My heart envisions a future of grassroots community-based, free, accessible, welcoming, non-judgmental and safe spaces for young people in the middle of the hurricane of adolescence....They will be spaces facilitated by those of us who’ve reclaimed what it means to be human.

The Journal of Clinical Medicine explores pediatric bipolar disorder through the eyes  a young American, whose story "reveals several issues that afflict contemporary psychiatry, particularly in...

The safety of our children is a sacred obligation we strive to preserve. Anything or anyone that harms them becomes the object of our...

Subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson have agreed to pay $5.9 million to settle Montana's lawsuit over the company's fraudulent marketing of Risperdal.  According to...

Claudia M. Gold, a psychiatrist who writes for the Boston Globe, takes on The New Republic's article ADHD Does Not Exist, which, she says,...

Thirty years ago, the prescription of neuroleptic drugs to children under 14 years of age was almost unheard of. It was rare in adolescents, and even in adults was largely confined to individuals who had been given the label schizophrenic or bipolar. By 1993 about a quarter of 1% of the national childhood population were receiving antipsychotic prescriptions during office visits. The percentage for adolescents was about three quarters of 1%. By 2009, these figures had increased to 1.83% and 3.76% respectively. The devastating effects of these neurotoxic drugs are well known, and it is natural to wonder what forces might be driving this trend.

What makes the DSM so pernicious is that it is a cultural document whose influence transcends not only psychiatric practice but also the Western civilization from which it originates. Each revision of the DSM rescripts and reimagines how we make sense of our experiences, reinterprets what thoughts, feelings and behaviors are socially sanctioned, and ultimately what it means to be human.

A report from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project finds that hospital stays for a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children aged 5-9 increased...

Jim Gottstein on Pressuring Parents to Drug Children

Psychology Today offers a psychoanalytic perspective on childhood bipolar disorder that finds trauma at the root, a view that sees Beyond Meds as extending beyond the diagnoses...

The fundamental importance of connection to a child helps us to understand the use of "Time-Outs" which, used improperly, can be like pouring gas on a fire in a situation that is already not working; causing a distressed child to go further awry and potentially contributing to symptomatology that puts them at risk of being identified as ADHD, anxious, or bipolar.

Researchers from Philadelphia and Baltimore find, in a study of Medicaid records for 50 states and the District of Columbia, that antipsychotic prescribing to...

Neuroskeptic takes on a new paper that proposes a new DSM-5's diagnosis will reduce the epidemic of bipolar diagnosis in children, comparing it to fighting...

by Chaya Grossberg July 25, 2012 He also told me the shrinks were changing around his drugs and adding more.  They added an antidepressant or two to the Lithium and increased doses and eventually he seemed to have very little life left in him.  Our phone calls became trying for he was so down, practically dead sounding a lot of the time, and I felt unable to do anything or say anything to make a difference.  To even try felt futile and I wondered if talking to me at all was becoming the burden of yet another person he couldn't connect with. In the early years, he liked to think of us as being in the same boat, both mentally ill, since I'd also had a meltdown and I also am extremely sensitive and go through extreme states.  But as the years went by, especially towards the end, I seemed to be in the ever growing “other” camp in his eyes, which meant I was yet another person who didn't get what it was like to be him. And at that point I can confirm I did not, and perhaps did not want to.

A study of 566 families with 1416 bipolar-disordered members, and 675 families with 1726 depressed members by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University...

Researchers from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre of King's College's Institute of Psychiatry in London, publishing in the Journal of Affective...