Surge in youth bipolar disorder diagnoses seen

[ShunkW]

EVERYONE is “bipolar” to some degree….not sure everyone needs meds though….

Surge in youth bipolar disorder diagnoses seen

Sept. 4, 2007
Courtesy NIH/National Institute of Mental Health
and World Science staff

The num­ber of vis­its to a doc­tor’s of­fice that led to a di­ag­no­sis of bi­po­lar dis­or­der in youths has risen 40-fold in the U.S. over the last dec­ade, re­search­ers have found.

The surge probably re­flects a “re­cent ten­den­cy to over­di­ag­nose bi­po­lar dis­or­der in young peo­ple, a cor­rec­tion of his­tor­i­cal un­der-recognition, or a com­bina­t­ion of these,” said Mark Olf­son of Co­lum­bia Un­ivers­ity’s New York State Psy­chi­at­ric In­sti­tute in New York, a mem­ber of the re­search team. “Clearly, we need to learn more” about how doctors are di­ag­nosing the dis­or­der in chil­dren and ado­les­cents.

Bi­po­lar dis­or­der is a men­tal ill­ness char­ac­ter­ized by cy­cles of de­pres­sion and ela­t­ion, or ma­nia.

Al­so over the past dec­ade, the num­ber of vis­its by adults re­sult­ing in a bi­po­lar dis­or­der di­ag­no­sis al­most dou­bled, Ol­son’s team found, adding that the cause of this is al­so un­clear. The study is pub­lished in the Sep­tem­ber is­sue of the re­search journal Ar­chives of Gen­er­al Psy­chi­a­try.

Doc­tors face tough ques­tions when de­cid­ing on treat­ment for young peo­ple, Olf­son and col­leagues said. Guide­lines for treat­ing adults with bi­po­lar dis­or­der are well-doc­u­ment­ed, but few stud­ies have looked at the effects of psy­chi­at­ric med­ica­t­ions for treat­ing chil­dren and ado­les­cents with the dis­or­der. De­spite this lim­it­ed ev­i­dence, the re­search­ers found si­m­i­lar treat­ment pat­terns for both age groups in terms of psy­cho­ther­a­py and pre­scrip­tion med­ica­t­ions. 

Of the med­ica­t­ions stud­ied, mood sta­bi­liz­ers, in­clud­ing lith­i­um, were pre­scribed in two-thirds of the vis­its by youth and adults, the team found. An­ti­con­vul­sant med­ica­t­ions, such as val­proate (De­pakote) and car­ba­mazepine (Tegre­tol), were the most fre­quently pre­scribed type of mood sta­bi­liz­ers.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070904_bipolar.htm

 

Sw