Some desperate parents, who have struggled for years with their children's problems and an acute shortage of mental health services, say the book's descriptions resonated with them and they found its take-charge tone reassuring.
"I was relieved because it made sense," said Elise Cohen of Rockville, a medical librarian whose daughter was diagnosed last year at age 10. "If we have a diagnosis there are treatments, even if it's not what you want to hear."
Experts are questioning the rise in pediatric diagnosis of bipolar illness.
(Randy Mays For The Washington Post)
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Kids and Bipolar Disorder: Dr. Jon McClellan discussed the growing number of pre-adolescent children diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
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Growing Acceptance of Drugs
Until recently, many doctors were reluctant to prescribe the powerful mood-stabilizing drugs adults take for bipolar disorder to young children, whose central nervous systems are still developing. Most of these drugs -- which can have serious and sometimes life-threatening side effects, including diabetes, significant weight gain, hormonal problems that can cause infertility, and fatal blood disorders -- have not been tested in children. Some are epilepsy drugs used to control seizures and not approved to treat psychiatric disorders, which are widely used anyway because some doctors think they are effective.
Resistance to using medications has softened, experts say, for a variety of reasons: aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies; the skyrocketing use of drugs in preschoolers to treat ADHD and depression; a lessening of the stigma surrounding bipolar disorder spurred by the accounts of celebrities such as Ted Turner and Jane Pauley; and an insurance system that rewards brief appointments to check mediation over time-consuming diagnostic evaluations and behavioral therapy.
The realization that "these are biological illnesses that require biological treatment and that you don't have to let these kids suffer" is relatively recent, said Martha Hellander, a lawyer and the founding executive director of the six-year-old Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF), an influential advocacy group based in Illinois. Hellander said the nonprofit foundation, which has 25,000 members, receives funding from several drug companies.
Medications are a cornerstone of treatment, Hellander said, even for very young children. She said the youngest patient she's heard of is an 18-month-old girl who was diagnosed as bipolar largely because she screamed incessantly and had a bipolar mother. Hellander said the baby was medicated with lithium.
Most children take at least three drugs simultaneously to control their moods and alleviate depression. Some try dozens of combinations and doses.
DeWeese said her daughter, who has tried more than half a dozen drugs, some of which made her act like "a raging maniac," currently takes Abilify, an antipsychotic primarily used to treat schizophrenia in adults.
Recently, DeWeese said, the dose had to be cut after the 8-year-old started drooling and one side of her face drooped.
Hellander said parents are often asked how they can give these drugs to their children. "We don't have any choice," she said, comparing them to lifesaving chemotherapy. "Most of us are grateful these medications exist. In earlier days our children would have been institutionalized."
But Blackmon said the drugs can cause the very symptoms they have been given to treat: hyperactivity, insomnia and even psychosis.
