FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: "The Medicated Child" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producer Marcela Gaviria, Jan. 9, 11am ET

This summer, FRONTLINE producer Marcela Gaviria set out to answer a
question that has been troubling parents, doctors, and government
regulators: Why are millions of American children being prescribed
increasingly powerful, behavior-modifying drugs that have not been
adequately
tested in kids?

In "The Medicated Child," airing Tuesday night, Gaviria takes us deep
inside the world of child psychiatry where a debate is growing about
how
early to diagnose mental illness in children, and which drugs are
safe
for treatment. At the heart of the story is the dramatic rise of a
controversial new diagnosis--bipolar disorder--which, until recently
was
thought only to exist in adults, but now has been found in over one
million children, including a growing number of toddlers. (Watch a
preview
at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/ ).

Gaviria finds many who challenge the validity of child bipolar
disorder, and others who charge it's being overdiagnosed. But,
ultimately,
it's parents who are stuck with the hard choices about whether to
treat
their children with the potent psychiatric drugs prescribed for the
disorder.

Meet Jacob Solomon, for instance. A preschool teacher urged his
parents to medicate him for hyperactivity, but the diagnosis
progressed to
bipolar disorder and Jacob soon found himself on a cocktail of
prescription drugs that came with serious side effects his doctors
don't yet
fully understand. "It all started to feel out of control," Jacob's
father
tells FRONTLINE. "Nobody ever said we can work with this through
therapy and things like that. Everywhere we looked it was, 'Take
meds, take
meds, take meds.'"

Then there's four-year-old DJ whose parents reluctantly agreed to
treat
him with a new "anti-psychotic" drug for his extreme mood swings.
"If
he didn't take [the medicine], I don't know if we could function as a
family," his mother tells FRONTLINE. "It's almost a do-or-die
situation over here." DJ's doctor explains: "It's really to some
extent an
experiment, trying medications in children of this age. It's a
gamble.
And I tell parents there's no way to know what's going to work."

So who's monitoring this experiment on our children? How do doctors
decide when a toddler's tantrums cross the line into mental illness?
What are scientists learning about genetics and brain development
that
might one day remake the entire field of child psychiatry? Gaviria
talks
to a broad range of child psychiatrists and researchers, then heads
to
Washington where she learns something that's sure to give any parent
pause at the pharmacy: The Food and Drug Administration knows
shockingly
little about the effects of most prescription drugs on children.

"Parents need to be aware that all products haven't been studied in
children," one top doctor at the FDA tells FRONTLINE. "As a matter of
fact, I'd say too high a percentage of time we don't know what we're
doing,
and we need to study it in kids and get the dosing right and know
whether it works in them."

We hope you'll watch this important and timely program Tuesday night,
and then visit us online to watch it again, explore the extended
interviews with experts, read a parents' guide on psychiatric
medications for
children, or get answers to some "frequently asked questions." And,
join our discussion at: http://pbs.org/frontline/medicatedchild/

Senior Editor
Ken Dornstein

--------------------------
+ Live Online Discussion on Washingtonpost.com ...

Producer Marcela Gaviria will be online this Wednesday, Jan. 9, at
11am
ET, to discuss "The Medicated Child."

For details, see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/01/04/DI2008010402244...

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