How Doctors Learn to Diagnose and Medicate So-Called Bipolar Children

How Doctors Learn to Diagnose and Medicate So-Called Bipolar Children 

The program is straightforward in its call to start drugging children in the absence of any scientific basis In the absence of treatment data, treatment of childhood bipolar illness is modeled on that of adults. Even if the child shows no signs of psychosis, the most toxic adult drugs are recommended For non-psychotic children, in descending order, treatment should be tried with lithium, divalproex, atypical antipsychotic, combining any of these approaches, and other anticonvulsants plus atypical antipsychotics or conventional antipsychotic.  

The reference to combining any of these approaches indicates why so many children are now being treated with cocktails of several toxic chemicals at once the drug company-paid experts at professional seminars are encouraging them. In my clinical practice, I am frequently faced with having to withdraw preadolescent and adolescent 

In 2005, the pharmaceutically oriented Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry published guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder (Kowatch et al., 2005). Martha Hel-lander, a coauthor of the guidelines, declared, These kids suffer so badly, and deserve to have evidence-based treatment as early in life as possible. Many respond quickly to mood stabilizing medication.  

At the same time, false claims are being made that these children have biological disorders. However, as Foltz (2006) astutely concluded, 

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