Kids With Bipolar ‘Lite’?
There has been a putative epidemic of bipolar among children in the U.S., and a corresponding rise in the pediatric use of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and other drugs.
“The Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation provides a 65-item online test with questions like, is your child ‘very intuitive and/or very creative’? Is he ‘intolerant of delays’? According to the survey, these characteristics could suggest bipolar disorder. (Or it could be “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria,’ yet another label that might soon be added to the list, suggesting a sort of bipolar lite.) All this has led to even more diagnoses, a putative epidemic of bipolar among the nation’s children, and a corresponding increase in the pediatric use of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and other drugs often used to treat bipolar adults.
