Also of note...
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What Does "Off-label" Mean?
Based on clinical experience and medication knowledge, a physician may prescribe to young children a medication that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in adults or older children. This use of the medication is called "off-label." <font color=red>Most medications prescribed for child mental disorders, including many of the newer medications that are proving helpful, are prescribed off-label because only a few of them have been systematically studied for safety and efficacy in children.</font> Medications that have not undergone such testing are dispensed with the statement that "safety and efficacy have not been established in pediatric patients." The FDA has been urging that products be appropriately studied in children and has offered incentives to drug manufacturers to carry out such testing. The National Institutes of Health and the FDA are examining the issue of medication research in children and are developing new research approaches.

Source: Children & Psychiatric Medications

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A new article in the Archives of General Psychiatry asserts that diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children and teens up to 19 years-old increased 4,000 percent between 1993 and 2003. ...

According to one press account, one of the study authors is even critical of the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in youths. I am, too, since there is very mixed evidence on whether it even exists in kids younger than about 12. This issue was recently taken up by Australia's ABC radio. Here's a transcript.

But whatever one makes of the diagnosis itself, I think the psych researchers who have been pushing this paradigm for unruly children should be ashamed of themselves. That's because the treatment paradigm of mood stabilizers and antipsychotics has barely been studied in children and teens, and has not been studied at all long-term. The injuries that can be caused by these drugs are well known. And to judge by what I glean from places like the bipolar groups on MySpace, it appears that these treatments are not proving to be effective in long-term use. And clinicians and researchers are well aware of this. My own view is that most of these drugs are not acceptable for long-term use except in extreme cases.

You'd think that should argue for some caution in the psych world and maybe some introspection about what it is that is apparently making America's youth (and adults) so much screwier than in 1993. But there's little except for silence on that front, and nothing but bloviating from the defenders of the faith at Harvard. No one is asking why they aren't making anyone well much less making them whole.

Source: Bipolar Diagnosis is Up, Up and Away