The new fad? Diagnosing young children with mental illness.
Oh and I mean young.
Originally, I’d written about how psychiatrists are diagnosing mental illness in infants. Mental health blogs now are all over the Rebecca Riley case and rightly so. She was a 2½-year-old toddler diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder. How a psychiatrist can diagnose a child that young is beyond me.
intueri has written a brilliant post about the case and diagnosing children that young:
“We need to stop labeling behavior as pathological just because it causes us inconvenience. We also need to stop using diagnoses as means of absolving us of our responsibilities (”it was the bipolar that made me say those mean things to you; it wasn’t me”). We, as providers, need to stop colluding in these goals: We need to stop the belief that a pill will always cure everything.”
(linkage attribution: Furious Seasons)
depression introspection 