Word: bipolarized
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...effective when combined with talk therapy or other counseling. Nonetheless, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry now lists dozens of medications available for troubled kids, from the comparatively familiar Ritalin (for ADHD) to Zoloft and Celexa (for depression) to less familiar ones like Seroquel, Tegretol, Depakote (for bipolar disorder), and more are coming along all the time. There are stimulants, mood stabilizers, sleep medications, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, antipsychotics, antianxieties and narrowcast drugs to deal with impulsiveness and post-traumatic flashbacks. A few of the newest meds were developed or approved specifically for kids. The majority have been okayed...
Within the medical community--to say nothing of the families of the troubled kids--concern is growing about just what psychotropic drugs can do to still developing brains. Few people deny that mind pills help--ask the untold numbers who have climbed out of depressive pits or shaken off bipolar fits thanks to modern pharmacology. But few deny either that we're a quick-fix culture, and if you give us a feel-good answer to a complicated problem, we'll use it with little thought of long-term consequences...
...lifetime suicide rate of 15%--with still more deaths caused by related behaviors like self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. Kids with severe and untreated ADHD have been linked, according to some studies, to higher rates of substance abuse, dropping out of school and trouble with the law. Bipolar kids have a tendency to injure and kill themselves and others with uncontrolled behavior like brawling or reckless driving. They are also more prone to suicide...
Which is why Teresa Hatten of Fort Wayne, Ind., hesitated little when it came time to put her granddaughter Monica on medication. Hatten's grown daughter, Monica's mom, suffers from bipolar disorder, and so does Monica, 13. To give Monica a chance at a stable upbringing, Hatten took on the job of raising her, and one of the first things she had to do was get the violent mood swings of the bipolar disorder under control. It's been a long, tough slog. An initial drug combination of Ritalin and Prozac, prescribed when Monica was 6, simply collapsed...
...Kiki Chang at Stanford University is trying to show that this is true with bipolar kids. He recently published a study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that looked at kids from bipolar families who had only early signs of the disease. Pre-emptive doses of Depakote eased early symptoms in 78% of cases before the illness ever had a chance to take hold. "You can sit and watch it develop or intervene and possibly prevent the disorder," says Chang. While the researcher is excited about his results, he admits that treating kids who are not yet truly sick...