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Monday, September 22, 2008

The Bipolar Children

While Philip Dawdy is trying hard to raise awareness on pediatric bipolar diagnoses*, a disease that is not still recognized by DSM, and the blogosphere discuss the article "The Bipolar Puzzle" New York Times Sunday Magazine I've decided to search "bipolar children" in Portuguese and in English.
"Children Bipolar"=
Results 433,000 and the "Criança Bipolar"= Results 97,900

In the Portuguese search the first answer that appears is a translation of this book review on "The Bipolar Child" : Demitri Papolos, MD and Janice Papalos.
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It sounds strange to me that this book is the first result because it's not translated into Portuguese. I've also found an article on one of the two Sunday's Brazilians mags Veja where you can read:

"Recently a Harvard University study in US demonstrated that one out of three adults is bipolar."

Isn't it too much? When it comes from Harvard I don't know what to expect.

*"As I noted last week, the paper does not discuss or in any way delineate depression in pediatric cases of alleged bipolar disorder. I find that very strange, particular when it comes to discussing bipolar disorder in teens (still technically pediatric cases). The paper, and one assumes the FDA's definition, is almost entirely focused on what the authors call mania or manic-like symptoms. Despite that focus and a lengthy discussion of relevant literature, the authors never arrive at a firm description of the clinical features of "mania" in pediatric cases. In other words, they never trot out in DSM fashion the symptoms of the alleged disorder nor define its precise duration. If that's science, then the FDA also believes in cold fusion."

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