I've always had a penchant for radio- but I grew up listening to Jean Shepard on WOR.

Radio's loss is our gain. But if anyone in the cyber world has heard one of your podcasts on Icarus or the Seattle station,( I forgot the call numbers), you do have a very good voice for radio.

I will have to see if I can find Ms. Egan's talk on line.

That is weird journalistic thinking. Even weirder, to me, is admitting it publicly.

The fact she passed over these other families is really rather telling. Just maybe the reason the families who were using medication had children with more attention grabbing and dangerous behavior that appealed to the imagination of a novelist like Jennifer Egan is because their problems were being confounded in bizarre and violent ways by the very medications that were supposed to be helping. Yes she did say she focused on the children who were more likely to be harming themselves or others. Geez, did she not put two and two together?

I had a different take on the radio show. I admired the fact that Egan readily stated that many families are stuck with managed care, due to the lack of proper health care within our country and pointed out that she was in fact a “lay person” several times on the show. In fact, she was critical of the managed care system, talked about how families are stuck seeing their primary care physicians for mental health care and due to time constraints placed upon doctors, these children may not be getting a proper diagnosis. While I completely agree with the fact that putting children on antipsychotic medication is dangerous if not unethical-Egan pointed out that one family she spoke with discussed the fact that their failure to correct their child’s behavior properly may have exacerbated the failure within the family dynamic. This seems to be a problem within many families in our country (Stephany is not included in this group.) I think it is easy for us to “Monday morning quarter back” Egan’s article but I thought the radio show was well done, Egan was well spoken, and her words cleared up a lot of what I read in her article.

I agree with your points Angie and I do not disagree ever that having children like this presents an enormous challenge to a family dynamic. I still think skipping over the families who were going it without meds perhaps because their kids were not as problematic and maybe there was more to debate about the diagnosis is still not entirely honest journalism. I don't think she keyed into the significance this fact may have had.

Sara-
She did talk about a family who was trying psychotherapy over medication on the radioshow. I can't remember the exact details of what the results were but you bring up good points about the medication issue...

Angie thanks for referencing me, because what people can learn from my daughter's history is typically not addressed with regard to the medicating of children topic.

Which is, that she was medicated for a childhood medical issue (bed wetting) with an antidepressant.

She had a reaction to the antidepressant (within 6 weeks suicidal/homicidal talk, hearing voices).

As a mom without any prior psychiatric medication experience at all, I took her to where I "thought" would be the best place for "mind" stuff (a psychiatrist) and she came out of that appointment with Luvox (another antidepressant)and a dx of OCD (the pdoc called it intrusive thinking)within 2 days she was beyond worse, the doc called in Melleril(antipsychotic), and 3 days later was inpatient at a psych hosp via the psych telling me "if it was my child I would admit her".

Within 2 months she now based on NO baseline except MEDICATED (these docs never saw her off meds, or ever questioned the Imipramine for bed wetting), and was re-dx early onset childhood bipolar disorder. All based on medication induced psychosis, --hell they ramped her up on Risperdal and it nearly killed her there---then sent her home on Zoloft, Depakote, Zyprexa , Ativan....she raged and raged, and no doctor would ever listen to me that she was never like that before, they would tell me to increase the Zoloft.

She was only 11, and those drugs were not approved for kids in 1999 and they shouldn't be now!

It was psychiatrists treating medication induced thinking/thoughts/psychosis/behaviors (attempted to jump from the car on the 405 north in Bellevue)while raging on 150 mg. of Zoloft.)

Sara can add about Chris Pittman, here, as he and my daughter are the same age and were on Zoloft at the same exact time. I got my daughter off of it by researching and writing letters (an abstract)about paradoxical effect and affect of behavior of children on antidepressants)and so she was "lucky" in the regard that Chris Pittman is sitting in prison now as a result of his Zoloft nightmare.

What I am concerned with now? parents being given antipsychotics for "depressed or anxiety" dx's for children.

The tables have turned, in my opinion, to a very dangerous setting with regard to the antipsychotics being approved for use in young kids and approved for MDD, anxiety and everything else in the DSM. Antipsychotics ruined my daughter's life, she is an experiment gone wrong with the psychiatric medical model/paradigm, a rare case, and one that I wish was not a "case".

Complex, is how they've summed it up now. After a decade, we get "complex".

Healthy comparison among them.. Bipolar disorder patients are getting increased day by day.. It can be curable yet it seems like a puzzle for all..

Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Patients, Bipolar Symptoms, Bipolar Community, Manic-Depressive, Mania, Mood Swings, Mood Stabilizers, Mental Health Evaluations, Episodes