On the serious note

Reading this Washington Post article on medicating children for bipolar disorder certainly gave me a rise. After reading this, I'm not sure if you'll be alarmed too.

But some experts say the surge in diagnoses is a dangerous fad--one critic called it "psychiatry's flavor of the month" -- a decision too often based on skimpy evidence, cursory evaluations and incorrect assumptions about genetic risk.

Experts on both sides agree that the 1999 publication of "The Bipolar Child" had a galvanizing effect. Supporters of early diagnosis and treatment say the book empowered parents and informed clinicians. Critics say it is rife with pseudoscience and exaggeration.

Among the book's most controversial features is its list of more than three dozen symptoms commonly seen in bipolar children, including silliness, separation anxiety, night terrors, carbohydrate cravings, fidgetiness, extreme bossiness, bed-wetting, lying, social anxiety and difficulty getting up in the morning. (Clearly every child is bi-polar!)

"There's a lot of throwing medications at people without thinking about what the problem is," he added. "Once somebody has a label, it is highly unlikely that label will be questioned. And by the time a person has been on 20 different drugs, you can no longer figure out what's wrong."

In general, this goes along with my serious problems with the medical establishment, particularly the Western model of medical practice, where chemicals are a fix-all. Having nothing to hide, I speak a little from personal experience.

I know children can be tough to handle ... for years I was a disciplinarian (aka Taekwondo instructor) in the suburbs of W. Fairfax. Parents would drop their kids off at the school for hours, in hopes that I would do their dirty work for them, and there were too many times i had to dress down smart-alecky pre-teens or attempt to wear out a group of jubilant 5 years old who could focus on only one thing for a second. I'm not sure these kids needed drugs, that maybe they needed more stimulation throughout the day, rather than the one hour they would get in the evening at taekwondo.

I guess my main beef is that who knows what effect these drugs have on children who haven't developed their neural systems. Create more psychos of the future? Major organ failure?