Philip= you wrote
"I wonder what's driving all of it".

Sweeps week! The next one is October 29-November 25, 2009.

ABCnews.con has a whole section on their site 'educating' people on 'mental illness'.
Look at the quack named Egor. He says bipolar disorder is a real disease just like lupus.
If that were true, how come these 'experts' can't VOTE lupus out of existence? I should be on TV exposing these cold blooded criminals for the filth that they are.

Well, I see the relatively new and unproven idea that children can have schizophrenia and other psychoses is now accepted as fact. What happened to the idea that most mental illness doesn't first "present" until the teens to mid-20s?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7976374&page=1

ABC news online has covered the 7 yr old Jani Schofield story, maybe 20/20 crew would want to interview that family.

Mental illness in children is very real, my anxiety disorder started when I was a child, a lot of children do have anxiety disorders as well as other mental health issues, however, this program sounds like they are going to exploit children who have mental health issues. Hopefully, they will respect the kids and not try to turn their parents into victims and hurt the kids. A lot of mental health coverage tends to paint people who have mental health issues in negative lights.

It would be so much better if they had a program that focused on the positive of children with mental health issues instead of the negative. So many programs just speak of the "damage" mental illness causes, but doesn't talk about how people with mental health issues are loving, caring, creative, deep and have amazing hearts and emotions.

I would hope that the program would highlight the significant problems parents have in accessing adequate services for their children with severe mental illness. The sad fact there is very little available other than unproven medication cocktails and once-a-week outpatient therapy. Brief hospital stays to "stabilize" kids are a last resort. Continuum of care doesn't really exist. Parents end up providing their own "residential" treatment setting at home with no one willing or able to provide daycare, after-school care, or respite of any kind. Parents lose their jobs from frequent absences--how else can they monitor their child closely for suicide when discharged from the hospital with no step-down aftercare? As I stated in one of my posts, "It's no wonder that some emotionally and financially exhausted parents give up their children to the foster-care system. Tragically, they are forced to "abandon" their child and be charged with neglect so that their child can receive the wrap-around services he or she needs (and deserves)."

I personally will never give up due to exhaustion, and bankruptcy, because my daughter deserves to have a life and support, and to know she is not alone, and find a way to navigate this world as someone who is not a typical conventional society accepted person.

The good part would be, if she was accepted for who she is, now there's the goal.

I have noticed a definately parting of the minds as it concerns traditional materialistic psychiatry and orthomolecular psychiatry. People are finally beginning to catch on to the fact that it is "food" and "diet" that causes mental illness. Bad news for big pharma. My personal experience after 16 years of Lithium, Neuroleptics and the rest of the psychiatric bull (not to mention Tardive Dystonia) - I found out I had TLE as a result of Celiacs disease and hypoglycemia. I am alergic to gluten and cannot eat sugar.

Shazaam - bipolar cured.

It is happening.

My MDD was cured with ten dollars worth of thyroid hormone. Too bad it took 25 years, 12 hospitalizations totaling over a year and umpty-ump expensive drugs and doctors' visits for this little condition to be noticed. Let's not forget the fact my career and work life ended abruptly at the age of 37.

Sue, I have learned how much better I feel when I eat a non-typical US diet. It's really amazing.

Sherry, were you able to go back to your career and previous life when you got the proper medical treatment and walked away from psychiatry? I hope so. If not (yet), you can still make it happen.

Psych doctors are willing to understand and treat thyroid disorders, even subclinical ones. Endocrine doctors on the other hand are not willing even when it is obvious that dumping psych meds on the problem will only mask it not treat it. We are in in the middle of this right now with our son. He has a thyroid problem (along with 20 other medical problems) but it now mental and emotional. But the psych says they had better start treating the medical or all the mental health care will do diddly squat.