Hello Phillip,

It's very insightful post...thank you for sharing.

We need to develop and endow an award for psychiatrists with the bravery of Dr. Diller. Some kind of Profiles in Courage award. Bravo to Dr. Diller and let's hope his courage inspires other psychiatrists to speak out as well.

I applaud Diller for speaking up when he saw what was an obvious problem with massive potential for negative outcomes.

My daughter was dx OCD in 1999 and the exact words of the inpatient psych who changed that dx just 2 months later, while she was having paradoxical reactions to the psych meds,to Childhood Bipolar Disorder, without observing my 11 year old: "I just got back from a conference in San Diego that said most kids who are OCD are actually Bipolar."

I wonder who was at that Summer/Fall 1999 conference he attended that influenced him to dx my daughter with a now confirmed mis-diagonosis.
~
Per the post below this one "techies eat free lunches" and technorati rankings--my blog ranks:

Authority: 23

Rank: 240,183

I think it's time for blog's such as Furious Seasons to be taken seriously for what is written here, and any offer to write elsewhere should come with a paycheck.

***URGENT NEWS***

ELI LILLY NOW FACES
AUSTRALIA CLASS ACTION RE ZYPREXA
(first one outside of the US).

http://www.network54.com/Forum/182310/message/1182269740

While I'm no Biederman fan, I do think we're going a little overboard with Biederman-bashing lately. The guy did a non-industry-funded clinical trial in 2005 showing that both Risperdal and Zyprexa help 4-6 y.o. kids with severe mental illness. We can't blame the guy for Rebecca Riley's death: He never treated her, and her death was attributed to an overdose of clonidine, not a drug Biederman advocates for bipolar disorder. Biederman deserves skewering for his role in Shire-funded "education" urging psychiatrists to use more stimulants--a different issue.

Daniel Carlat says "The guy did a non-industry-funded clinical trial in 2005 showing that both Risperdal and Zyprexa help 4-6 y.o. kids with severe mental illness."

I'd like to see this study. Over what time frame was the "benefit" measured and what kind of withdrawal (to enter the trial) were the kids in before they were put on drugs that supposedly benefited them? And what severe mental illness was that at that age? Are we sure we are not talking about kids who were in some severe set of circumstances that desperately needed addressing? They must have been. Just because a study is non-industry funded means very little because Biederman is in bed with the industry in so many ways that how one particular study was funded hardly means it's free of conflict of interest. IMO Biederman deserves all the bashing he's getting and more besides.

Depa's definition of a quack:

A health care professional who prescribes drugs to children knowing that they have serious (even life threatening) long term side effects for a condition that doesn't have accurate, validated or agreed upon diagnostic criteria.

Depa's definition of unethical and/or corrupt:

Doing the aforementioned while accepting big money from the manufacturers, distributors and marketers of said drugs.

Since the unfortunate tragedy, the Boston Globe has published several articles that appeared to me as little more then apologias for these quacks- and what would appear to have become an accepted be the "standard of care" in parts of Massachusetts.

IMO, their writers and editors share some of the blame for the ongoing problem. Nice to see that they've at least published an op ed that runs counter to the irresponsible position they've taken on this issue.

Hats off to that man for having the guts to do what is right; not what is easy. (to quote Albus Dumbledore)

Now...bring on the Dog Whisperer method vs Pharma in out of control kids, I want to see that study.
Here were my results, from twenty years ago.
bummer, no html and I don't know how to make a tiny url
http://seemedlikeagoodideathetime.com/2007/05/03/bring-on-the-hate-mail-ive-spanked-my-4-year-old-instead-of-drugging-him/
(can you fix it?)

Cheers for Dr. Diller! More like that, please.

Let's remember that more than anything, Diller is trying to generate controversy to sell his book. Talk about a conflict of interest!

"Biederman deserves skewering for his role in Shire-funded "education" urging psychiatrists to use more stimulants--a different issue." --Carlat

I just noticed this last sentence in Daniel Carlat's comment, and would like to know more about the stimulants, and would that be for ADHD? What exactly was Biederman's role?

Dr Biederman has been our daughter's psychopharmacologist for about 12 years. He has been responsible for saving her life.

I have also been reading all the pertinent research, that really only started about 10-15 years ago, on childhood BP and Biederman's team has made a significant contribution toward understanding this illness better and improving treatment.

In the last couple of years there is finally genetic research (through the Broad Institute with Biederman's group) being done that for the first time gives me some glimmer of hope that the physiological causes may finally be uncovered - initially beneficial in improved diagnosis and treatment with existing medications and eventually more effective treatments.

Blaming Biederman for Riley's death may be one of the most absurd things I have ever seen. He never treated her. This was just plain old yellow journalism on the part of the Globe.

I don't doubt that you have all had horror stories in getting treatment for your children. We went through a dozen therapists, psychiatrists, etc. before we came upon Dr Biederman. Ultimately, he had the advantage of seeing hundreds more children suffering from this illness and having first hand experience of seeing what worked and what didn't. The typical child psychiatrist or therapist may only see a dozen or less of these kids over several years.

Even with Dr Biederman, treatment of this illness is still mostly a guessing game. Unfortunately, with these children, particularly the most severely inflicted (as our daughter is) the risk of side effects from these medications is less severe than the debilitating symptoms that they can sometimes lessen.

In the case of our daughter, she suffered from significant weight gain which increases her chances of diabetes and other problems. However, her daily aggressive and suicidal behavior has mostly disappeared. She would not have survived adolescence if this result had not been achieved.

In regards to the statment,

"Biederman could justify his findings by simply broadening the semantic definitions of a previously more circumscribed condition contained within American psychiatry's bible -- the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders'."

There has been significant debate and disagreement over the definition of childhood BP and the DSM reflects very important but only the most conservative list of attributes. Given the relatively (compared to most other diseases of any kind) small amount of research funded for childhood BP the DSM diagnostic attributes are primitive at best.

Dr Biederman made it very clear to us that his diagnosis and treatment strategy was on the front edge of the research and the most current results and evidence of success. For severely afflicted children there is no other rational choice but to try almost anything that has some hope of addressing the life threatening symptoms.

I agree that there has been a great deal of mis-diagnosis and treatment of children by less experienced physicians and mental health professionals. This is more about the lack of training required and the availability of child psychiatrists. I still remember learning from another BP parent of the statistic a couple of years ago that there was only one child psychiatrist in the entire state of New Mexico.

I guess I am upset by all the energy being consumed by the media everyone else trying to discredit Dr. Biederman. This energy could be of greater benefit focused on the National Institute of Health in demanding greater research dollars that reflect the incidence level of this illness (that even the most conservative researchers agree is significant).