World of Psychology (Free subscription) | 20/09/2008
As I’ve been away on vacation this past week, I missed this great (but lengthy) article by Jennifer Egan published last week in the New York Times Magazine about the controversial and complicated issue of bipolar disorder in children. Egan makes a compelling case for the legitimacy of this disorder in a nonscientific and very [...]
The Carlat Psychiatry Blog (Free subscription) | 15/09/2008
The first paragraph of Jennifer Egan’s article on bipolar disorder in the current New York Times Magazine is striking: When Claire, a pixie-faced 6-year-old in a school uniform, heard her older brother, James, enter the family’s Manhattan apartment, she shut her bedroom door and began barricading it so swiftly and methodically that at first I didn’t understand what she was doing. She slid a basket...
Jung At Heart (Free subscription) | 15/09/2008
The pediatric bipolar horror show goes on with the appearance yesterday in the NY TImes of a long article in the magazine by Jennifer Egan. It becomes clearer and clearer to me that the dominant paradigm is that medication is the first line treatment for anything psychiatric, regardless of conflicting data about diagnosis or effectiveness. And I hope someone is looking at how and why this is. I have...
Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: (Free subscription) | 15/09/2008
Jennifer Egan has a roughly 29,000 word piece in the New York Times magazine regarding child bipolar disorder. OK, maybe it just seemed that long. As is apparently required for such articles, there is a very lengthy story about an allegedly bipolar child that constitutes much of the article. I'll not be focusing on that. Instead, I'll be looking at how the article discusses the controversy surrounding...
Dr. X's Free Associations (Free subscription) | 14/09/2008
Jennifer Egan writes in the Sunday NYT Magazine:[N]early every clinician I spoke to said that bipolar illness is being overdiagnosed in kids. In Leibenluft’s studies at the National Institute of Mental Health, only 20 percent of children identified with bipolar disorder are found to meet the strict criteria for the disease. Breck Borcherding, a pediatric psychiatrist in private practice in the Washington...
Living the Scientific Life (Scienti (Free subscription) | 14/09/2008
tags: bipolar disorder , manic-depression , mental health , mental illness , behavior Image: Gerald Slota, The New York Times Magazine . A couple days ago, I heard an interview with Jennifer Egan on WNYC about her upcoming article in tomorrow's New York Magazine about bipolar disorder, often known as manic-depressive illness, "The Bi | Polar Puzzle." It's long but well-written and definitely worth...
Think Outside the Cage (Free subscription) | 13/09/2008
This fascinating article begs the question, what happens to those kids and families who don't have the resources to diagnose and treat their kids? Where do those kids end up? I assume that we see a large percentage that drop into the criminal justice system. By JENNIFER EGAN When Claire, a pixie-faced 6-year-old in a school uniform, heard her older brother, James, enter the family
The Independent (Free subscription) | 14/03/2008
Danny is a damaged 36-year-old New Yorker, who doesn't like to go anywhere that isn't Wi-Fi compatible. Against his better judgement, he finds himself travelling to "Austria, Germany or the Czech Republic" to help his enigmatic cousin, Howard, turn a medieval castle into a speciality hotel. Having set the stage, Egan unleashes a complex and deeply creepy series of events that tip Danny into a paranoiac...
