Newsweek Takes On The Bipolar Child
The new issue of Newsweek has a cover story on a child who allegedly has bipolar disorder and, while it is an article filled with lots of detail and heart, it is also one of the worst pieces of journalism on the alleged disorder that I have ever seen. I'll return to the media criticism in a second.
The article concerns a boy named Max, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hyperactivity when he was two. He's been on 38 different meds, including Zyprexa at two years old. He's been hospitalized. He's been in therapy (still is). He's made suicide attempts. His parents, seemingly educated and fairly normal, have tried everything. He even had an off-meds trial that lasted for one month (probably not long enough to assess things, but then I wasn't there). Their son is 10 years old now. He's not doing particularly well. There's an accompanying video which I cannot make myself watch.
It's a very sad and rough story to read. It takes place in the Boston area (why are so many of the stories about out of control kids centered in the Boston area?). And, yes, the kid's doctors come the realm of the Harvard bipolar child army. While I am critical of the bipolar child paradigm, it's very clear that there is something the matter with kids like Max. We're a generation now into diagnosing young children with serious mental illnesses and I don't think we have many answers for what's up. That's discouraging.
We'd all like answers, but my global hunch is that child bipolar disorder is not anything other than an intermediate explanation of what's going on. Maybe I'll be proven wrong someday.
Even more discouraging is the magazine's handling of the most controversial diagnosis in all of psychiatry and psychology. The author, Mary Carmichael, admits a few times in the piece that the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in kids is controversial and that some doctors feel it's overdiagnosed (since it doesn't even exist in the DSM, it's overdiagnosed by definition). However, Carmichael doesn't include a single quote from a single critic of the child bipolar disorder paradigm. These critics exist, have medical degrees, teach at major medical schools and are easy to find through the miracle of search engines. Why Carmichael didn't include any dissenting views is hard to understand. Why her editors at the mag didn't insist upon the same is beyond comprehension for a news magazine that is supposed to adhere, at least somewhat, to the basic journalistic principles of fairness. Unless the editors and Carmichael have swallowed the Kool-Aid of the child bipolar paradigm and are now becoming its primary advocates in the press. If so, they should run an editorial announcing and defending the magazine's stance on the issue. Otherwise, they are misinforming and duping their readership and violating their trust. They are also being lazy.
Even more staggering are Carmichael's descriptions of the disorder. Here are a few:
"Yet untreated bipolar disorder can be disastrous; 10 percent of sufferers commit suicide."
That's nonsense, as I've written about previously and it's time for the American media to stop using inflated suicide statistics to scare people.
"Max's life, of course, is rarely easy. During a recent appointment at Frazier's office, he went into full-fledged mania. Laughing wildly, he rolled on the floor, then crawled over to his parents and grabbed an empty medication bottle, yelling, 'Drugs! I've got drugs! It's child safety!'"
If that's what counts as full-fledged mania these days, God help us all.
"Max will never truly be OK."
How does the reporter even know this? Sigh.
The web page of resources for families that the magazine provides is pretty much just a series of links to various proponents of the bp kids business although, interestingly, it includes a link to Robert Whitaker's website for Mad In America, a very critical look at how America has treated mental illnesses in the past (the book's narrative stops many years ago). As I recall, the book doesn't even take up the bipolar child controversy, so its inclusion, while nice to see, is sort of confusing. But whatever.
The mag's website also has a page tackling "the biology of bipolar disorder." Whitaker is quoted there and criticizes the use of psychotropic drugs in children, particularly in how they might affect brain development. Other than that, it's just the usual talking heads of the bipolar child paradigm.
There's an already lengthy comment thread on the magazine's website.
Anyway, I pass all of this along for whatever it's worth to anyone. Happy reading.
Posted by Philip Dawdy
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