Are too many children being diagnosed as bipolar who are not?

Below is an interesting excerpt on children being overly-diagnosed with bipolar, I got from the April 19th edition of "The Austrailian".


CHILDREN as young as four are being diagnosed as bipolar in what some medical experts warn is an "epidemic" of over-diagnosis rippling from the US.

Psychiatrist Louise Newman said the US trend for diagnosing "quite young children" was highly controversial but was starting to be repeated in Australia. "I had a child referred to me, who had been diagnosed by someone else with bipolar disorder, who was four," Professor Newman said.

"This child had many other reasons for being emotionally disturbed. No one is questioning the validity of the condition - the question is whether we are calling conditions bipolar disorder that in the past we would have called something else."

Professor Newman said diagnoses in psychiatry tended to "go in and out of favour", and fashion was part of the reason why diagnoses of bipolar disorder had increased.