Australian Psychiatrists To Tackle Pediatric Bipolar Disorder At APA Convention

Update: I screwed up. Although I couldn't tell from the materials, Parry tells me that the colleagues who will be presenting with him are actually American child psychiatrists. I regret the error and am glad to see that more American psychiatrists are helping Parry spread the skepticism around.

The American Psychiatric Association is about to have its annual convention in San Francisco. I learned yesterday that Peter Parry and a few other Australian psychiatrists will present to the APA membership on the many controversies surrounding pediatric bipolar disorder (ages 10 to 17) and alleged bipolar disorder in small children (prepubertal bipolar disorder, child bipolar disorder) and their recent findings that psychiatrists Down Under and elsewhere outside of the US find the paradigm to be largely nonsense.

From the presentation syllabus:

"Taken in conjunction with results of a similar survey of German child & adolescent psychiatrists and the British National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines (2006) on Bipolar Disorder, such views support assertions that PBD remains a controversial diagnosis with limited penetration outside the USA."

Much of the concern centers around cases of alleged bipolar disorder in kids under about 12 years of age, a concern I share. As Parry told an Aussie newspaper back in February:

"'If you'd told me three years ago that two-year-olds were being diagnosed with bipolar disorder my reaction would have been "that's impossible," Parry said.

"'Most of us in the psychiatric profession consider it extremely rare prior to puberty, let alone in a two-year-old.'"

Indeed.

As I noted when I was interviewed by Psychology Today last month, the bipolar child paradigm is a strictly American phenomenon, "as big a metaphor of our times as credit swaps, subprime loans, and government bailouts."