Wave of bipolar over-diagnosis

Wave of bipolar over-diagnosis : "Psychiatrist Louise Newman said the US trend for diagnosing 'quite young children' was highly controversial but was starting to be repeated in Australia. 'I had a child referred to me, who had been diagnosed by someone else with bipolar disorder, who was four,' Professor Newman said."

It sounds mad and before yesterday I would have dismissed it. I was talking to someone who treats disturbed children During the conversation it was mentioned that some of these children between the ages of 8-12 years were hearing voices. Normally this would come at the ages of 16-25 or so. I am not the expert. We had no reason to disbelieve the information. So then, as a group , we tried to think of how that might be occurring. We were thinking by now, there have to be more and more children born to drug addicts. Information is starting to come out about foetal alcohol effects and that would affect previous generations, but now we have to be dealing with drug effects. Some of these substances would be affecting receptors and transmitters in the brain and so the behaviours we normally associate with psychiatric disorders of older people may now be presenting themselves in children. Just a thought. We need to actually think about this and what it might mean. I know some parents loved to have particular diseases for their children, but I think we are so over that now.