Bipolar Diagnosis Engulfs 2 to 5 Year olds, Reveals Study

Latest figures have revealed that the number of young children aged between 2 to 5 have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and have received powerful antipsychotic drugs has doubled over the past decade, claimed a research issued on Friday.

The researchers revealed that the practice is becoming more frequent, more-so because that it is rare to prescribe powerful psychiatric drugs to 2-year-olds.

Bipolar disorder, causing a severe mood swings, was conventionally believed to emerge only during adolescence or later. However, recent studies have cited that the condition could exist in children as young as 30 months.

The data, compiled from 2000 to 2007, and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, could inform testimony at the upcoming Boston-area murder trials of the parents of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley diagnosed Riley with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when she was 30 months old.

The girl died of an overdose of mood-stabilizing medication in 2006. However, prosecutors claim the Rileys deliberately overmedicated their daughter to subdue her.

The report's author, Mark Olfson, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, revealed that around 1.5% of all privately insured children aged between of 2 and 5, or one in 70 children, received some sort of psychotropic drug in 2007.