A Bipolar Child Murdered: Media Mostly Asks The Right Questions

The Boston-area media continues to pound on the murder of Rebecca Riley, a four-year-old who'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADHD and was overdosed on an ADHD drug. Her parents stand accused of murder, her psychiatrist has temporarily stopped practicing medicine and the state's social services department is under fire. Area editorialists are starting to write things like:

"The death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley of Boston from an overdose of a drug used for hyperactivity raises all manner of difficult questions about the drugs used for children diagnosed with mental disorders."

And:

"The public is left to wonder, for starters, how a psychiatric doctor could have diagnosed a 28-month-old with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder."

More here. I wonder how psychiatrists who've pushed the ADHD in toddlers paradigm and bipolar disorder in children as young as two-years-old paradigm feel about all of this right now. I think the use of psych meds in children this young needs to be dramatically curtailed, reevaluated and, yes, stopped altogether. Is this the endgame of kids watching tons of TV and playing video games endlessly? Is this what happens when kids don't play sports or run in the woods?

This whole diagnose-medicate-blame-the-"illness"-for-bad-outcomes nonsense has got to stop. It's bad enough in adults and teens, but in kids it is a complete outrage. It is interesting to me, though, that when a child dies, the skeptical questions are asked. When an adult has awful results from taking Zyprexa, say, or Paxil, the media is largely silent.

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