The Medicated Child Essay

Since the early nineteen hundreds Psychologists have been treating children who have shown recurring patterns of mania and depression. At first it was not believed that adolescents could be diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, then, in the nineteen-fifty’s, the American Psychiatric Association published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Soon hundreds of children were being diagnosed with this condition that no one really understood. And still, there is not a abundance of research that will improve the treatment of adolescent Bipolar. In The Medicated Child they addressed the issue of medication, and initial diagnosis of children diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.
The Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology reported that cognitive behavior therapy greatly improves symptoms in Bipolar adolescents when combined with pharmacotherapy. The SCCAP say's “Studies indicate that individual/family- and group-based formats of child- and family-focused CBT (CFF-CBT), a manual-based model that incorporates the treatment methods described above, resulted in improved PBD symptoms and psychosocial functioning among youth.” Therefore, since CBT does improve Bipolar symptoms in children, it may be possibly, over …show more content…
Biederman, J.) Again, this bring us back to one of the major problems addressed in The Medicated Child. Psychiatric's stated that many of the medications used to treat adolescents with Bipolar Disorder were only tested on adults, which leads to the discussion of is is ethical to test such medications on children. Psychologist go around and around on this issue, but in the big picture, these drugs must be tested somehow or we cannot use