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Point Park University to Present June 8-9 Symposium on Bipolar Children: Cutting Edge Controversy, Insight and Research

Posted on: Tuesday, 5 June 2007, 15:00 CDT

PITTSBURGH, June 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Point Park University will present its seventh annual Childhood and Society Symposium from June 8-9 in Pittsburgh. This year's topic is Bipolar Children: Cutting Edge Controversy, Insight and Research.

Organized by Dr. Sharna Olfman, a Professor of Psychology at Point Park whose books include No Child Left Different and Childhood Lost, the symposium will feature an internationally known group of clinicians and researchers who share her alarm about the meteoric rise in the number of children across the socioeconomic spectrum who are being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and prescribed a cocktail of potent psychiatric drugs that include anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers.

Participants include Joel Bakan (The Corporation) Larry Diller (Running On Ritalin) David Healy (Let Them Eat Prozac) Elizabeth Roberts (Should You Medicate Your Child's Mind?) and Toni Vaughn Heineman (Children and Youth in Foster Care). The goal is to present the complex factors that are contributing to this dangerous practice and to advocate for change from practices that amount to child abuse. The symposium will examine:

-- Conflict of interest between drug companies who liberally fund their own drug research and patient welfare -- Marketing the pediatric Bipolar Diagnosis and drugs directly to families through website, TV and magazines -- HMO medicine that encourages 5-minute assessments by pediatricians with no background in child psychiatry -- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is pressing for new diagnostic guidelines for pediatric BD to be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM V). This would codify the practice of diagnosing unruly children with BD and lead to an even steeper rise of diagnoses and prescriptions for children. -- In the wake of the "refrigerator mother" theory of autism, psychiatrists are prone to explain children's unruly behavior in terms of brain chemistry rather than parenting. Now taken to an extreme, the permissive parent of an unruly child is more likely to be told by a psychiatrist that her child has Bipolar Disorder when he is really in need of consistent discipline. -- Teachers, pressured by budget cutbacks and oversized classes frequently act as psychiatrists and pressure parents to get their children medicated. A child with a psychiatric diagnosis can bring in much needed state and federal funding to a cash strapped school. -- Antidepressants and stimulants are known to induce mania, and children are almost always diagnosed with BD after they have diagnosed with depression or ADHD and have been on a course of medication. -- Once diagnosed, physicians rarely change the diagnosis even if the drugs aren't working or are causing adverse side effects. Instead, they add more meds. -- This trend cuts across the socioeconomic spectrum, children from gated communities as well as children in foster care are being misdiagnosed. -- As many as two and a half million children in the U.S are on antipsychotic drugs, originally created for adult schizophrenics -- This trend is exclusive to the U.S.

The symposium is open to the media. All speakers are available for interviews.

Point Park University

CONTACT: Ginny Frizzi, Director of Media Relations of Point ParkUniversity, +1-412-392-3987, vfrizzi@pointpark.edu

Web site: http://www.pointpark.edu/

Source: PRNewswire

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