Chronic fluctuation in mood and overactivity, and cognition and conduct disturbances by another name would be called "childish behavior." Identifying this behavior as a mental illness is always called "child abuse" in my opinion.

Absent any clear indicators of what causes BD, how can anyone know if the ordinary ups and downs of young children's moods is anything of consequence? And until there is a large scale longitudinal study tracking children from birth to adulthood looking specifically and behavioral and mood variables, what use is the data now being touted?

The whole childhood BD thing is a load of crap, to be blunt, in my opinion.

Szasz wrote "George Washington warned: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is power. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Psychiatry is a part of the government.

This is what parents who are told that their child suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder must never forget. They must never forget that school personnel and child psychiatrists and psychologists are government agents. Their job is to control children, not to care for their health or well-being.

Caring for the health and well-being of children is the parents' job. Government, as Washington said, is not reason. It is unreason.

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.
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Child psychiatry -- like all of psychiatric slavery -- cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.

How can parents protect their children from the therapeutic state, that is, from the alliance of government and psychiatry?

They can do so only by disabusing themselves of the idea that what ails an unhappy or misbehaving child is a mental illness, and that so-called psychiatric treatment can help him.

They can do so only if they recognize that bringing up children is no picnic -- that, in fact, it is the hardest and least publicly rewarded job in the world, bar none. Raising children is tough. It has always been and always will be tough. "
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Link

"Whether this syndrome represents an early variant of BD or some other psychiatric disturbance is at this time unknown and requires further research."

Why does it have to represent a "psychiatric disturbance"? Maybe the kid is just responding to some nasty set of circumstances or a less than pleasant set of parents -- there are plenty of them out there. I haven't read the whole article (yet) but she still sounds pretty locked into a "medical model" in the quotes you present. "Prodromal psychiatric disturbances in early childhood antecedent to the manifestation of recognizable BD" -- give me a break. If a baby or toddler starts acting up because a whole bunch of hell is going on around him or her I don't call that a "prodomal psychiatric disturbance"; I call it lousy parenting or bad luck -- and a cry for help or change. Admittedly I may be taking a black and white view here but this woman isn't giving one little nod to circumstances and I think that's a big omission and doesn't make her much better than the Harvard mafia. Sorry to say.

I would say that, as Duffy's findings state, that there are certain mood fluctuations that many people who are later diagnosed with bipolar disorder tend to experience in childhood. However, those are too subtle in my opinion to make any sort of diagnosis from, and in fact can lead to the wrong diagnosis. My boyfriend, who has bipolar II, was diagnosed at 11 with depression and ADHD, and put on Adderall, which only exacerbated the mood fluctuations. It's only now, as a college student, that he's been properly diagnosed. I also have bipolar II and experienced similar mood disturbances as my boyfriend as a child, and I was diagnosed for the first time this spring. So, I think maybe it does show up as a child, but not in any form that we can diagnose, which medically means it might as well not be there at all.

She states:
"In this paper, I argue that, while ill children of parents with BD show nonspecific symptoms such as anxiety, mood lability, and sleep disturbance quite early in development, BD meeting DSM-IV criteria typically does not manifest until at least adolescence."

I suspect the response to this, if there is one, will be that BD does not manifest itself to show the same exact constellation of symptoms in chidren as it does with adults. Basically, that child BD is a preliminary stage for adult BD that has slightly different symptoms before it manifests itself the familiar way that adults show. Because they don't really have much besides behavioral symptoms, the diagnostic criteria is not set in stone. They are probably aiming for rolling out a child version of BD for inclusion in the DSM-V.

I don't find her helpful if she does not look at the context of children's lives when evaluating them. Children are stuck in their families, unlike most adults, they have no control over their environment, may live in a chaotic family which would make any child have changes in mood, they may be abused or neglected. Not having mood fluctuations in those situations should be more cause for concern by professionals than having them, the child who is unaffected by abuse or chaos or neglect is going to be in a lot more trouble as an adult than the child who can express his or her emotional reactions to stressors.

A few months ago, I represented out state DBSA at a state conference for Social Workers.

One woman came up to me. Very well groomed, dressed to the nines like she just stepped out of Vogue for Professional Women. Very sharp contrast to the other women there in ratty jeans and T's.

She told me she has several bipolar children as clients, aging between 6 months and 4 years.

I challenged her with a diagnosis of 6 months.... if the kid cannot talk, or crawl or do much of anything, how is he bipolar?

He either sleeps all day or is up all day. Never half and half.

I asked her could it be something else to make the kid not sleep or hyper sleep? Mom and dad messing up sleeping schedules? Diapers not being changed? Someone different watching the kid?

No. She replied. He is bipolar.

I'm not blessed with children. But I do have common sense. And common sense seems to me a child that age cannot be bipolar.

Here's What I think.

I just remembered/found a better explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFtK0rcAvCA
The Old Dope Peddler