Our news story about the increase in bipolar diagnoses in children and teens is eye-opening to everyone who reads it. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry basically found a huge, 40-fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and …
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I’ve got another perspective. I used to get a kick out of how many mental health professioals as well as doctors would diagnose me BiPolar or manic depressed when I was just a drug addict. It wasn’t a condition of depression or BiPolar…I WAS A DRUG ADDICT. The sad part is, I work with dozens of families every week looking for help with an addicted family member. In almost every case, their loved one has been diagnosed improperly, not to mention unethically, as BiPolar or Depressed. At one point, I was always shocked to hear this. Unfortunately, now it’s common place.
Nice analysis, John. It is written for a broad range of readers, another plus for it. Your work in translating mental health trends for the general public is outstanding!
How about a fourth explanation?
Mainstream family physicians and mental health “experts” (btw, an ideological designation, but that’s a topic for another time) have been trained in a certain way. It’s often a part of our upbringing and education in professional schools, that certain criteria of symptoms are assigned to various “disorders”, inc. the bipolar one. I’d argue that a cultural component is often missing from the analysis.
The doctors have diagnosed the “bipolar depression” according to how they have been socialized (i bet, many, if not most, are not even aware of that–it’s often subconscious). Similar to the classic case of IQ tests, where there was a cultural bias in design and delivering, the contemporary diagnosis criteria are too uniform for our increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic society(ies).
It may take ten, twenty or more years before we wake up from the denial. Until then, more and more people and esp. youth (our next generation!) are going to be diagnosed, labeled and drugged.
Hello,
I have been depresed since I was born. Before Kindergarten, my mother took me to the “family doctor” after explaing to him her frustration with me. This is what he said:
“Your mother tells me that you’re always ‘mad at the world! Don’t you know that if you smile, the world smiles with you? Plus, you’re so much prettier when you smile more!”
What a dope.I was first diagnosed properly at 42. I’m 52 now.
Why have the bipolar diagnoses from regular doctors exploded? Why not consider the possibility that the big increase in ADHD/stimulant/antidepressant prescriptions in the last decade have actually induced, or kicked-off, manic behavior that might otherwise have lain dormant?
You can’t fake a bipolar illness it’s too debilitating and it’s highly unlikely that the rates are on an increase due to a change in diagnosis criteria. If you go by the numbers the increase in rates of bipolar and other psychotic illness coincide perfectly with the creation and prescribing of SSRI medications. I now have psychotic symptoms that began while taking an SSRI, though they diminished in intensity after cessation of the SSRI my symptoms never went away, and I no longer can work. My Dr. tells me every time I see him that I must have always been this way becuase SSRI’s do not cause this. Had I been this way before I would have a well established track record of losing friends and abandonment from family members, and never would have had a career or a job for more than 3 days every 6 weeks. I only lost my friends, career and ability to function after taking an SSRI.