In the process of making our childs life better (through treatment of ADD, Bipolar and depression) are we hurting or helping?

As far as bipolar and depression, they must be treated. My sister went undiagnosed and was miserable. She ran away, often. She was in very dangerous situations and just couldn’t get a hold on life. The pain she went through, it was horrible to see her this way.

One of my daughter’s best friends attempted suicide about 4 months ago. She’s 14, depressed and bipolar. Her doctor convinced her mother that the only thing she should be on was thyroid medication and therapy for depression and bipolar. That didn’t go so well. She spent 3 weeks in a hospital and had to be re-admitted a week after she returned home. She is now being treated by another doctor, one that agrees that medication is necessary and so is therapy – different forms of therapy. She is a creative child, intelligent and wants more out of life. I think to not treat (medically) is more of a risk.

I’m on the fence about ADD. I don’t have a child with ADD – so I feel that my opinions are on the outside. I have friends that have children with ADD or ADHD – some I can see that they really need the treatment, others that I wonderful if the therapy and behavioral therapy routes, would be more beneficial; however, like I said, I’m an outsider on that one.

Not sure about the “must be treated”, guess maybe the amount of risk of that individual doing themselves bodily harm should be factored in.

I was the child that you describe, continual thoughts of suicide but never attempted it. My grandfather saved my life on more than one occasion. I respected and admired him, so, when he told me “To commit suicide is a cowardly act, to live it takes guts” I took that to heart and the only thing that kept me alive was that fact that I would be a coward in my grand fathers eyes.

You friends daughter is creative, so was I. With any medication now, the loss of a large portion of that creativity is the price. I look forward to the day that we can treat mental illness without squashing the creative drive.

Many people have told me that an artist is the hardest person in the world to live with. I made my living for 15 years as an artist and can attest to the fact that I was hard to live with (as can my wife).

I still have the ability, I just do not have the drive. It takes a real effort for me to get off my butt and do something.

That is a loaded question…I do not know bi polar very well and their treatments however, I do have experience with my son and ADD. When my son was 8, he could not sit still in class for long periods and the teacher suggested that because of his inability to stay still and focused that he had ADD. We went to the doctor and the doctor asked him and us questions followed by a prescription for medications.

I felt really bad about this, because by this point, my son was used as a scapegoat on the playground, in class etc…his self-esteem was getting lower and lower before my eyes. Instead of providing him with medications, I pulled him out of school and home schooled him for 2 years. He was fine. I thought, how can any “boy” sit still for 2 hours at a time and stay focused?

However, later we moved to Israel, where he had to attend an international private school. It is hard to say what the contributors are to psychological changes in a person…but his grades started to drop and the teacher, doctor and psychologist including my husband started to tell me that refusing the medication, that I was abusing my son.

After three years, my son decided to stop taking the medication without telling anyone. Now he is 22 and we talked about the experience. He said, “I learned how to get high from taking the medication” I made me feel high. Once I stopped, I would take them to get high. Between the ages of 13 and 22 he has been high on one drug or another, not prescribed.

He blames the retlin. Now, he is fighting to remain straight, and cannot remember anything in his life for the past 9 years.
I think it is a fine line.
It is really hard to tell what are the contributing factors to these mental issues.

However, once he stopped taking the medication, he became an artist. While on other drugs. Now that he has been “straight” for 5 months, he has lost his creative drive. I am hoping that he will balance out and get grounded and get back into his art. He does lack the motivation to do anything, and now I am wondering if he is bi-polar.

I do agree, to be treated (with medicine…oh those pills) there is a trade off; however, there are an amazing amount of people that are being medically treated and live creative, successful lives. I wish my sister was home, she has a list of famous bipolar people – she has it on her refrigerator.

As a family member, it hurts to watch someone struggle with bipolar and depression and being completely honest, it is extremely difficult. I’m proud of my sister, though. It seems in the last few months, she sees a light, for the first time. I hope and pray that continues, we’re all behind her!

Bipolar and Depression must be treated.

However, my mother has worked with children who have ADHD and helped their parents to alter their diets and routines and seen it go away completely. I have no sympathy for parents who don’t exhaust that option before turning to medication. In my opinion the vast majority of ADD/ADHD will never need medication or are misdiagnosed.

Treatment doesn’t necessarily mean medication. When it is all about making someone ‘normal’ we are on the wrong path. One size fits all for children is ridiculous, but it is the easiest way to deal with it. Here kid, pop this pill, Daddy’s late for work. (See how I didn’t go for obvious and blame the Mommy)

The child may respond to ‘behavior modification’ OK, too jargony. Give kids skills to deal with impulses. I don’t necessarily believe that sugar and food additives contribute to behavioral problems, but there are other reasons to eat a healthier diet, right? ADD doesn’t happen like a lightening bolt, one day thoughtful well-behaved child, next day force 5 hurricane. The problem builds up over time. Don’t just assume your 3 year old will grow out of it. Use positive discipline, it requires more time and attention but what is the alternative? Giant dosages of chill pills? Medication may be a tool but one to be used lightly.

For the school problem, there are options. If you are exasperated with two children, one with ADD, understand Ms Pennypacker has 25 kids, two with ADD, 4 who have not received home training in social behavior, 3 who are emotionally immature and 1 who sits quietly and has an undiagnosed learning problem. Do you wonder that she can’t cope better with your child. The school is required by law to provide an appropriate educational environment and that may be:
1. Support home schooling
2. Provide pull out to work one on one with a teacher
3. Support a different schedule, allow the child to go home at lunch time to defuse, rest and maybe get back to work later,
4. Provide teacher assistants and a smaller class size.
And other things.

Over time if the child has learned coping skills, has avoided getting labelled as a rotten kid and has been able to develop social skills the symptoms usually diappear as s/he becomes an adult. If kids are identified as ‘disabled’ or their peers avoid them because of behavior or they feel they are being controlled by drugs, it is no wonder they accept it and become depressed and suicidal or internalize those messages and behave badly as adults.

I’ve been depressed for the majority of my life and been on various lovely anti-depressants… the last of which gave me electric shock like symptoms in my brain and made me numb to everything. I decided to come off them after understanding that really they were doing nothing other than making me shut down to life. It was also suggested at one point that i was bi-polar but i feel that all this did was label me as an ill person. It identified what i already knew about myself.. i was screwed up basically. Pills don’t make all those bad feeling disappear… they just put you off looking at them, feeling them and dealing with them for a while.

I now feel better than ever after being off pills for over a year. I can see the beauty and colour in life, i can connect with people and feel pain and happiness and enjoy every emotion as it reveals itself to me. I’ve been having counselling for over 18 months and i really believe that searching within yourself is the answer for depression and definitely not pills. This is purely my opinion on depression though nothing else..i don’t have much experience with the other disorders.

Is it just me or does there seem to be more and more people diagnosed with these disorders?

I wonder, are all of them actually happening or are doctors over-zealous with their diagnosing? And if they are all happening why such an increase? I’ve read some British studies that show a correlation between artificial colouring and ADD/ADHD. From that I wonder about the other slurries of chemical cocktails we all ingest.

My answer to this inquiry,....
“Wine Press”
It is sometimes true of highly creative persons, that their artistic works are accomplished amidst great emotional and or mental anguish.
Indeed, such inner discord can be a vital motivating factor and source of inspiration necessary to produce their artistic expressions. + In these modern times, medical research is discovering new advancements in pharmacology = medications that regulate certain chemical imbalances in the brain, with remarkable success…. to those so afflicted, creative or not. It can be viewed however, that these promising medications, helpful to most, could inhibit the very inner conflicts needed by the artist in order for their creative inspirations to take flight and soar unabated, gracing the world’s varied artistic cultures with rare and great beauty, an unfolding of the conscious and subconscious aspects in their intuitive divine discourse, and while communicating that highly focused and determined creative resilience, so characteristic of humanity’s innate need to express it’s inner soulular spirituality outwards into the world about, yet, still be diagnosed by the “learned ones” to injest a pill to cure their bewildering psycosis.
God, help us from those who think they are helping us!!
“Peace of Mind is Welcome and Appreciated, but to some, it May Be an Unnecessary Luxury”
“Anguish, $10.00”
get me on eBey, get me at your local psych clinic!!
Thorazine all around!!
Roll me a Bummer!!
Chemical imbalance? read a can of soup!!
Eat it up USA. we’ll die for this.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,...
May the Holy Order of the Butterfly = HOB, be with you,
now into the tomorrows.
ouch!! I needed to say this.
Got a problem with that!
shut up!!

The problem with treating children, is that no one yet knows how to diagnose them, at least for bipolar. I think that much more is believed to be known about ADD, although I do think ADD may be overdiagnosed in the US. By how much, I couldn’t say.

It seems to me that it is still controversial to diagnose children with bipolar disorder. It is also not well understood how the standard meds for bipolar will affect children.

I believe that everyone who treats children wants to do the best by their children. Parents, of course, want the best.

The education system is another story. What’s the difference between an active boy and a boy with ADD? Are teachers having problems with discipline, so they have the parents come in and have their kids evaluated? Do they hope they can put the child on ritalin and calm them down, so there can be classroom order?

And the psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers that evaluate them—are they prejudiced in favor a positive diagnosis because that will get them more business?

My son was recently given a whole series of tests, and found to have learning disabilites. He scored above 50%, and he had learning disabilites? Well, he goes to a high performing school, and they don’t want to have to deal with a child who is slow to read. Weed out the slow ones, and the school looks even better.

On the other hand, if a child really is sick, then they absolutely should be treated: drugs, therapy, whatever works. It disturbs me that the diagnoses can be all over the place. The medical people see the child for fifteen minutes, or give them a few tests, and they can tell if they have a mental illness? Even if they read all the reports, and all the intelligence tests, and interview the child for an hour, and hear from parents and teachers, is that enough to get it right?

Even if they get it right, the meds situation is difficult. IN adults with bipolar, they try one drug after another until they find what works. There is no predicting what will work before hand. We’re all experiments. WIll our kids be experiments, too? Well, they have to be. But that may be intolerable.

So they we get rid of the drugs entirely, and deal, as best we can with our children. We hope that doing it the natural way is good enough. We hope we, and our children, can survive it. Good luck to all of us!

Medication is not the answer in my book. The emphasis should be on counseling and homeopathic remedies THEN medication if necessary or severe.

I recently read that ADHD was a disease ‘created’ to sell more drugs. Given the Big Pharma’s eagerness to sell more drugs for minor problems, (Viagra, anyone?) I wouldn’t doubt it. When I was a child, we were hyperactive, rambunctious, bouncing off the furniture and didn’t listen to our elders. It was called being a kid. A swat on the butt usually solved the problem.

Oh wait, giving a kid a spanking will make him grow up to be the next Jeffrey Dahmer or Richard Speck. Yeah, let’s just give him some anti-psychotic drugs that will make him commit suicide instead. Only one victim that way. Feh.

@evelyns_pet_zebra: I do sometimes wonder if the ADD kids are the result of inconsistent expectations by parents. I don’t think spanking is necessary to be consistent in your expectations and discipline, but I do think that inconsistency of any kind is just inviting trouble.

@evelyns_pet_zebra There is a problem with a kid and the fastest, most convenient way to deal with it—shove a pill down his throat. Do you also notice that when a dog is rambunctious, instead of training the dog, we either let him run the house or give them doggie valium?

Virtually every parent will tell you they will do everything for their children. Today that translates to everything they can pay for, even more than they can afford. That is fine for most children because they can pick up on behavioral cues from society. With ADD or ‘rambunctious’ kids, what many parents aren’t willing to give is time, structure and training. It is slower and more difficult than a pill but generally in the long run you end up with happier more productive adults instead of pill-popping, self-pitying anti-social burdens on society.

@daloon, I agree that inconsistency in parental discipline is a far bigger problem than most people give it credit for, and that in America at least, people assume a quick fix is the best fix. I know of a young mother who doesn’t use physical corporal (is that the right word?) to discipline her son, and he is a very well behaved little boy. I think it has much more to do with consistency and I in no way wanted to insinuate that spanking would solve the current problems. I was just saying that it worked for us, back in the 60’s and 70’s.

@galileogirl, I have a problem with parents doting excessively on their kids. When I was a boy, we made do, we got by, we even (gasp) went without when necessary. I see parents driving to and from schools to drop off and pick up their kids. This is in a fair sized city of around 70,000 where the families live no more than a few blocks away from the school. I assume this stems from the fear of sexual predation or child exploitation. The fear of sexual predators seems blown far out of proportion, and I blame the media for pushing this fear far beyond the actual statistics. It’s like when there is a school shooting and the media proclaims it is an epidemic problem. This is false, if it was epidemic, it would happen on a daily or weekly basis.When was the last school shooting in the news? But hey, bad news sells newspapers, so I guess to the media, the ends justifies the means.

I don’t mean doting, what I mean is being a real parent and deal with disruptive behavior in a caring but and consistent manner.

We had a sibling who was a kid who would be called ADD today. As a toddler he was always into things. My mother was a pediatric nurse and on her ward they used nets to keep kids from climbing out of cribs. My brother had one on his to keep him from wandering the neighborhood in the middle of the night. The real trouble started when he went to school. We later learned he was dyslexic but he hated school and my father was called in every week.

He made some really dumb moves too, One day he and his friends foud WWII K-rations so they tried to cook them on a sunbleached grassy hill-luckily no homes burned and only a couple of fences were scorched.

There were always consequences but he never seemed to connect his actions with a failure to think things through. He challenged all authority but my father’s, He was held back in middle school and in high school he was in an alternative school.

At 15 he and his buddies broke through the roof of a store for beer and cigarettes without having an exit strategy. When my father piced him up at the police station there was a discussion that was never shared with anybody but that was the last criminal act. He was required to get a job and he volunteered to work at a summer camp for retarded children and came home with the desire to work in that kind of field. I believe that his brain caught up with his body. (Now I see it regularly with kids who are nuts at 15 and change completely their 16th year.) After he settled down he got help for his dyslexia, graduated, spent 6 years in the military (2 in VN) and used the GI Bill to become a special ed teacher.

Now this is not a Hallmark Channel movie. Like everyone else he had personal problems related to his choices but overall he was a good, productive man. I think it had a lot to do with my father seeing him through his childhood and youth, never excusing bad behavior but never giving up on him.

@galileogirl I read an interesting study a while back in regards to your stating that he “had a failure to think things through”

A psychological study of children was done and the conclusion was, that in youth we have no comprehension of conseguences resulting from an action. Our brains are simply not wired that way. The ability to look ahead and forecast consequences doesn’t fully come to play until around 20 years of age. It explained a lot of things that I had questions about regarding my youth, my daughters youth and my grandchildren.

@pekenoe Exactly, I had a teacher who was a published author in brain development and she looked at it more in terms of when children’s brains could learn different things rather than behavior. That kids under the age of eight learn best by rote and have no critical thinking ability, for instance.

Historically most cultures recognize there is an age of understanding the difference between right and wrong, 6–8, and a time when they are able to go beyond black and white, 13–15. But it is a process and my brother always lagged behind as a child. For example, my parents were shift workers so we always knew when Mom or Dad were sleeping, we went elsewhere to play. My brother would take his buddies and play under the window of the neighbor who also worked nights and be surpried when the guy was upset. He would get a wanderlust and several times took off for Texas, once traveling hundreds of miles before he got picked up and another time getting into an empty boxcar on a train whose next stop was the factory where my Dad worked. It was not about runnung away, it was about the adventure.

The point is he was never identified at home as a “bad” kid, nor was his behavior excused or glossed over. My Dad especially worked with him including giving him consequences.

I think the problem I have is that certain people want to call normal behaviors symptoms of disease and then find a drug to treat it. When I was growing up I did things that I regret now, mostly because I behaved selfishly and didn’t think through the consequences of my actions. That’s called learning. One older brother of mine was playing with matches and burned an entire cornfield down. Another older brother was diagnosed as ‘slow’. Nowadays, he’d be placed in special schools, given drugs, and told he has ADD or ADHD or Tourette’s Syndrome. He went through regular school like the rest of us did. He struggled with certain subjects, but he persevered and graduated. He turned out smarter and more knowledgeable than many of his ‘non-slow’ normal peers. Youngsters are going to do stupid things, its how we learn. I jumped out of trees as a boy but never broke a bone. I was lucky. Some kids can jump off a garage and die. So do we ban kids from jumping? Do we call impulsive jumping off of high objects a disorder of the brain and find some drug to keep the little buggers from climbing up on stuff and jumping down? Some people would. The thing is,I know of people that want to ‘child-proof’ the world. I understand the need and desire to protect one’s offspring, but to deny others a chance to explore their limitations because one kid was unlucky is ludicrous. Life comes with risks. That’s my two cents on it, and I still refuse to accept that ADHD is a legitimate disease at all.

I recently met a 13 yr old boy that hsi Dad says is suffering fro Tourette’s Syndrome. I suppose it is because the boy is belligerent, talks out of turn, has authority issues and just generally behaves like a teen. I met the kid, spent some time with him, and found him to be a pretty normal child of thirteen. Of course, that was only a few hours, but Tourettes? Sounds fishy to me.