Dear Dawdy;

I wrote The COBAD Syndrome last year because I realized in 2003 that many of my adult outpatients with bipolar disorders had characteristics described in the research literature on bipolar children during the past decade, including a very high incidence of comorbid ADHD, panic disorder, and social phobia. Biederman's group at Harvard identified a 90% incidence of ADHD in bipolar children in 1995, and that figure has been confirmed in studies by Barbara Geller and others. So what's the big deal?
The big deal is that adults with childhood-onset bipolar disorder--at least 1% of the population-- also have ADHD, and adult psychiatrists need to accurately diagnose the syndrome and treat it effectively. It makes a big difference in people's quality of life to do so. I have seen this repeatedly in my work as a psychiatrist with twenty years experience treating bipolar disorders.
Incidentally, I discovered the syndrome in my adult patients only after recognizing it in myself and in my two daughters, who were both diagnosed with bipolar disorders originating around age five. I then realized that no one was writing anything about the syndrome in adults, even in the large scale STEP studies of the past few years. The psychiatric "establishment"--including the American Journal and the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry--declined to publish my findings last year, mainly because they are based on case series. So I published them on my own last July, and am trying--at my own expense-- to get the concept out to the psychiatric community and to the public. The "mental health" press, meanwhile, is deluged with pharmaceutical company hype, and I have not been able to break through the media sound-byte barrier.
I am, nevertheless, certain that I am on to something very important for millions of adults diagnosed with bipolar disorders. A number of studies published in the past two months have now confirmed that the COBAD concept is real, but we still have a long way to go in understanding how to effectively treat the syndrome. I have described my own approach--and the controlled research data--in The COBAD Syndrome; New Hope for People Suffering from the Inherited Syndrome of Childhood-Onset Bipolar Disorder with ADHD (Author House. July, 2005)
If you know how I can get my findings out to the public, I'm open to suggestions. I've never had the personality to be a successful "pimp." My focus has been somewhat the opposite--offering something helpful to humanity at my own expense.

Many Thanks,

William Niederhut, M.D.

Barbara Geller was one person (and I have this email somewhere)who told me, that the only way to know if my daughter needed meds, was to go off of them.

"I've never had the personality to be a successful "pimp."

As a former patient of Dr. Niederhut, I can testify that, in fact, he does not have a "pimp" personality nor do I believe that he is an actual Pimp.