Huffington Post

Psychiatry Makes War on "Bipolar Children"
Dr. Peter Breggin
May 23, 2008

The front cover of the May 26, 2008 Newsweek has a banner headline,
"Growing Up Bipolar" with a split-face photograph of a ten-year-old
boy. The headline should have read, "Victim of Psychiatric Assault."
In daycare 18-month old Max kicked, bit and spat on his larger peers.
Apparently before he was two years old, his overwhelmed parents took
him to a famous Boston psychiatrist -- having been trained in
psychiatry at Harvard, I can confirm that famous Boston psychiatrists
are among the most arrogantly pro-drug -- and within an hour the
toddler had been diagnosed as bipolar. Right away he was put on the
adult "mood stabilizer," Depakote. Depakote is an anti-seizure drug
that is so sedating that it can, however briefly, subdue a child, at
least until the effect wears off.

According to the parents, the doctor told them that the bipolar
diagnosis was a "life sentence." It was a life sentence -- to being
pharmacologically abused by psychiatrists. At the age of ten, Max is
now eight years into his sentence, and getting increasingly abused by
his physicians.

The doctor must have put Max on a lot of drugs because a second famous
psychiatrist wanted to "streamline" the meds. Reducing anyone's drugs
is nowadays a rarity in psychiatry; Max's first psychiatrist must have
been over the top.

A mere ten years old, Max has already been on 38 different
psychoactive drugs. "His parents aren't happy about it, but they have
made their peace with it." Newsweek concludes, "Max will never truly
be OK" because of his "disease." In reality, toxic chemicals are
impairing and distorting the growth of Max's brain. Psychiatric drugs
commonly drive suicidality in children and Max now leaves suicide
notes. Tragically, he has become so afraid of psychiatry that after
writing his last suicide note he sobbed, "Please don't send me to the
hospital."

From now on, Max, his family and his doctors will almost certainly
have to face an increasingly impossible dilemma common to children who
are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs for a period of years. When
trying to withdraw these children from multiple psychiatric
medications, they almost certainly go through severe withdrawal
problems with extreme emotional instability and the risk of worsening
violence and suicidality. But if they are kept on drugs indefinitely,
their brain, mind and overall condition will further deteriorate.(1)

It can be relatively easy and safe to withdraw a child from one or
even two psychiatric drugs, especially if the parents are willing to
learn improved methods of discipline. But when multiple drugs are
involved, when the drugs have been taken for a long time, and when the
parents are deeply distressed or cannot agree on how to raise their
child, withdrawing the child from psychiatric medication can be
difficult and hazardous.

Newsweek makes clear that Max's parents have serious conflicts over
how to raise their son, but they have not pursued therapy, marriage
counseling or, apparently, not even parenting classes. In every case
of an out-of-control child I have seen in my psychiatric practice,
either the parents were unable to reach agreement on a consistent
approach to disciplining their child, or a single working mom was
trying to raise a young boy without the aid of a male adult in the
child's life.

In glimpses that we are given of this family, Max's father is somewhat
like his son; he doesn't deal well with feelings, and he thinks his
wife is much too permissive, calling her a "Caspar Milquetoast."
Reading between lines, it appears that Mom is left with the lion's
share of trying to discipline the desperate child, and perhaps has her
hands full with her husband who has a "temper" and is "inflexible."
While not have the opportunity to personally evaluate Max and his
family, we can speculate that Max might have trouble figuring out how
he is supposed to behave. Meanwhile, this family's story sounds like a
clarion call for a combination of therapy, marriage counseling and
parenting classes.

Newsweek declares "At least 800,000 children in the United States have
been diagnosed as bipolar, no doubt some of them wrongly," but then
immediately adopts the extremist psychiatric viewpoint, "The bipolar
brain is miswired ... " After warning in passing that the drugs
inflicted on these children can be useless and even dangerous,
Newsweek then justifies them by declaring, "Yet untreated bipolar
disorder can be disastrous; 10 percent of sufferers commit suicide."

Drug companies wrote this script and none of it is true.

First, all of these preadolescent children are being wrongly diagnosed
by conventional psychiatric standards. We have no evidence at all that
temper tantrums and other unruly behavior, however extreme, is a
precursor to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder as an adult.

Second, since there is no known connection between children diagnosed
bipolar growing into adults diagnosed bipolar, the data about a 10%%
risk of suicide is misleading and irrelevant.

Third, there's no evidence whatsoever that individuals diagnosed
"bipolar" have a "miswired brain." There's not even any such evidence
for a biological flaw in adults who suffer from full-blown manic-like
episodes, let alone children whose parents and teachers cannot control
them. (1)

The concept that children have bipolar disorder and should be treated
with highly toxic adult psychiatric drugs is strictly a drug-company
marketing ploy. If it's true that 800,000 children have been
diagnosed, it has become an enormously successful marketing strategy
with tragic results for children and their families.

There's an even more sinister aspect to all this. There has been a
real increase in teenagers and young adults who display episodes of
manic-like symptoms such as insomnia, excessive energy, racing
thoughts, grandiose ideas about themselves, irrational and outrageous
behaviors, extreme irritability, paranoia, and psychosis. However, in
my three and one-half years of intensive psychiatric training in the
1960s, I saw only one case of a young person suffering from these
symptoms. In the following years through approximately 1990, I saw few
other cases. Yet nowadays I evaluate many teens and young adults with
manic-like symptoms in my medical and forensic practice. The reason
for the change? As I document in detail in Brain-Disabling Treatments
in Psychiatry (2008), antidepressant drugs, so freely given to
children and youth, cause a high rate of manic-like behaviors.

These changes -- diagnosing children bipolar and driving other
youngsters into states of drug-induced mania -- has not occurred by
chance. Joseph Biederman, one of those famous Boston psychiatrists,
has led the way in pinning the bipolar diagnosis on children who are
having temper tantrums and outbursts of rage. Biederman, well situated
at Harvard, is a long-time henchman of the drug companies, so much so
that even the Wall Street Journal found it necessary to comment on his
deep financial connections to his industry patrons. (2)

The promotion of drugging "bipolar children," has been enormously
successful. Before the 1990s, doctors hardly ever diagnosed bipolar
disorder in children. In fact, I do not recall hearing the diagnosis
given to any children prior to the 1990s. A recent survey in the
scientific literature showed that there was a forty-fold increase in
diagnosing bipolar children between 1994 and 2003. (3) The survey
found that 90.6%% were receiving psychiatric medications, including
60.3%% on mood stabilizers like Depakote and 47.7%% on antipsychotics
like Risperdal and Zyprexa, with most on combinations. To compound the
tragedy, the study found that more children were being given the most
toxic psychiatric drugs, the so-called antipsychotic drugs, than a
similar group of adults labeled bipolar. Psychiatry is bombarding
children more heavily than adults with similar diagnoses, even though
the drugs are not approved for these purposes in children.

The advantages to the drug companies are obvious. If most "bipolar"
children get several drugs at once, several dozen over their
childhoods, they transform from being patients into being cash cows
from psychiatry and the drug companies. Further administration of
multiple psychiatric drugs at once complicates the clinical picture so
that it is impossible to pinpoint which drugs may be most responsible
for the adverse reactions the child experiences. Because so many
doctors and so many drug companies will share the blame for
mistreating these children, they will be unable to seek redress
against individual perpetrators through the courts when they grow up.

It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for any child to outgrow
his early behavior problems, and become a normal adult, while being
pharmacologically overwhelmed with toxic agents for most of his
childhood. The growing brain is literally being bathed in substances
like antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic
drugs that cause severe, and potential permanent biochemical
imbalances. All of these drugs have been shown to distort the shape of
brain cells (neurons) and in some cases to destroy the cells. (1) Some
of the drugs, including Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and other so-called
'anti-psychotics' expose the child to permanent and potentially
devastating drug induced neurological injury called tardive
dyskinesia. They also cause potentially fatal diabetes and
pancreatitis, as well as morbid obesity. (1)

The mass drugging of America's children has become such an outrageous
practice with such vast public health and societal implications, it is
difficult to know how to conclude my observations. I can understand
how parents who feel confused and overwhelmed can be pushed by
psychiatrists into trying to control their children's behavior with
drugs. But shame, shame, and more shame should be heaped upon a
profession that has forsaken its sacred trust to protect and to care
for children, and instead has become a major child abuser of epidemic
proportions.

(1) Breggin, P. (2008). Brain-disabling treatments in psychiatry:
Drugs, electroshock and the psychopharmaceutical complex. New York:
Springer Publishing Company.

(2) Abboud, L. (2005, May 25). Treating children for bipolar disorder?
Doctors try powerful drugs on kids as young as 4. Wall Street Journal,
p. D1.

(3) Moreno, C., et al. (2007). National trends in the outpatient
diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder in youth. Archives of
General Psychiatry, 64, 1032-1039.