Several factors have amplified concern about the possibility that antidepressant medication may contribute to induction of pediatric mania. These include the high rate of antidepressant medication prescription, the recent surge in the rate of diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder in the USA, and a growing number of case reports and clinical studies showing coincidence of manic symptoms with antidepressant pharmacotherapy in both youths and adults. However, the question of how medications and manic symptoms might be related is complicated, and decisive research studies with rigorous designs for evaluating the issues have not been published.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol
December 2008
Bipolar disorder (BD) is an increasingly prevalent diagnosis in youth. As a result, there has been a corresponding increase in interest about neuropsychological and cognitive profiles in children and adolescents diagnosed with BD. Meta-analysis of the existing literature comparing individuals with BD to healthy controls indicated that the largest differences are observed for measures of verbal memory (d = 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe psychometric properties of four teacher report measures and their utility for accurate diagnosis of pediatric bipolar spectrum disorders (BPSDs) were examined. Participants were 191 youth (65% male; 62% African-American; 23% diagnosed with a BPSD), age 5-18 (M=10.16, SD=3.
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