Mental Disorders

They are some of the most troubled children that psychiatrists ever see. They have raging tempers and engage in reckless behaviors that frequently land them in the principal's office, even the hospital. But are they bipolar? In the last 15 years, diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children have skyrocketed as much as fortyfold, according to some estimates. The condition — defined by severe mood swings, between depression and mania, lasting for weeks or month at a time — has traditionally been considered a lifelong condition in adults and is treated through tranquilizers and antidepressants.

Medications to treat mental health disorders is soaring among U.S. adults, according to data released Wednesday by Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager. Twenty percent of all adults said they took at least one medication to treat a mental disorder. Among women, 25% said they took such medication and 20% said they were using an antidepressant. The survey analyzed prescription drug trends among 2.5 million insured Americans from 2001 to 2010. Medco researchers also found that adults ages 20 to 44 had the greatest uptick in use of anti-anxiety medications, atypical antipsychotics and drugs to treat ADHD.

Several types of personality disorders will be dropped from the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But one disorder previously proposed for elimination -- narcissistic personality disorder -- will likely remain in the text. The American Psychiatric Assn. announced Thursday that the framework for personality disorders in DSM-5 will be a "hybrid" model that is substantially different from how personality disorders are diagnosed currently. Under the new system, personality disorders will be aligned with particular personality traits and levels of impairment.

The final straw for Carolyn Alves came last fall when she tried to help her daughter Cecelia dress for kindergarten. The volatile 6-year-old had worked herself into a frenzy as she tried on outfit after outfit, rejecting each as unacceptable. The tantrum at full bore, she scooped up a pile of clothes and hurled them at the front door of the family's Spanish-style bungalow in Glendale. The clock ticked past the school's 8 a.m. bell. Alves pulled her wailing child into her arms and held her on the couch.

The legal team challenging Proposition 8 in a federal trial tried to show Thursday that the ballot initiative was a form of bias that was likely to make gays and lesbians more vulnerable to mental health problems. Columbia University professor Ilan H. Meyer, an expert in mental health issues among gays, lesbians and bisexuals, testified that gays and lesbians were more likely to suffer from mental disorders than heterosexuals because of discrimination. Proposition 8 sent "a message that gay relationships are not respected, that they are of secondary value if they are of any value at all," Meyer said.

A persecution complex. Paranoid schizophrenia. Psychotic depression, with both homicidal and suicidal characteristics. Severe bipolar disorder. Though no one can now diagnose Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, mental health experts who watched his videotaped message about Monday's rampage say there was evidence of all of those mental disorders. His desire to kill others as well as himself is "not an unusual combination for a school shooter," said Dr.

Patients walk into Peter Breggin's office and lay their diagnoses on the couch: They're depressed. They're anxious. They're sure they have a measurable, palpable illness, with shape, substance, gravity, consistency. "A little boy came in with his parents and I asked him: 'Do you know why you're here?' " Breggin says. " 'Yes. I'm here because you're the doctor who doesn't believe I should take Ritalin for my ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder).'

As chairman of the task force that created the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which came out in 1994, I learned from painful experience how small changes in the definition of mental disorders can create huge, unintended consequences. Our panel tried hard to be conservative and careful but inadvertently contributed to three false "epidemics" -- attention deficit disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder. Clearly, our net was cast too wide and captured many "patients" who might have been far better off never entering the mental health system.

About hypersexual disorder Psychiatrists have proposed adding hypersexual disorder to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A description of the disorder includes having four or more of the following criteria over at least six months. The symptoms must be severe and not caused by something else, such as drug abuse or medication. A great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges and by planning for and engaging in sexual behavior.

Within the first three months after giving birth to their first baby, one of 1,000 women experience schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression or some other mental illness severe enough for them to be hospitalized, a major Danish study has found. The findings underscore a potentially perilous period after delivery when key hormones such as estrogen and progesterone, which are elevated during pregnancy, fall precipitously, possibly triggering mental disorders.

Several types of personality disorders will be dropped from the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But one disorder previously proposed for elimination -- narcissistic personality disorder -- will likely remain in the text. The American Psychiatric Assn. announced Thursday that the framework for personality disorders in DSM-5 will be a "hybrid" model that is substantially different from how personality disorders are diagnosed currently. Under the new system, personality disorders will be aligned with particular personality traits and levels of impairment.

Tiger Woods' mistresses. Arnold Schwarzenegger's secret child. Bill Clinton's sexual escapades in the Oval Office. Every case of a prominent man risking his family, career and status for extramarital sex raises the question: What were they thinking? Mental health experts wonder this too, and not just because of the cases that make headlines. Each year, thousands of men and women from all walks of life seek psychiatric help for sexual conduct disorders, said doctors gathered here last week at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn.

"Where are we going to put the narcissists?" It was a question asked urgently by one of the hundreds of psychiatrists gathered here last week for their professional society's annual meeting. With doctors in the thick of a years-long effort to rewrite the essential textbook for diagnosing mental illnesses, questions like these came up time and again in meeting rooms, over drinks sipped from coconut shells, and in other venues during the five-day conference. Among the myriad proposals now on the table: reducing the number of specific personality disorders from 10 to five, a move that would eliminate the diagnosis of narcissistic disorder.

Bipolar disorder, or manic depressive illness, occurs in 2.4% of people worldwide at some point in their lives, a new study suggests. Researchers conducted interviews of almost 62,000 people in 11 nations as part of the World Health Organization's World Mental Health Survey Initiative. The point was to measure rates of different types of bipolar disorders. They spoke to residents of Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, India, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Romania, Shenzen (China)

Predictably, politics has dominated the reaction and commentary about Saturday's deadly rampage in Arizona, with no shortage of wild speculation as to whether festering national divisiveness was to blame for the shootings. But it's far more likely, judging by the disjointed and delusional rantings of the alleged shooter ? and the puzzling behavior described by those who knew and feared him ? that 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner has a major mental disorder. Sure, Loughner's homicidal outburst might have been affected by anti-government rhetoric and political diatribes on the Internet or on the airwaves.

The number of college students who are afflicted with a serious mental illness is rising, according to data presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Assn. in San Diego   The findings came from an analysis of 3,265 college students who used campus counseling services between September 1997 and August 2009. The students were screened for mental disorders, suicidal thoughts and self-injurious behavior.   In 1998, 93% of the students seeking counseling were diagnosed with one mental disorder, compared to 96% of students in 2009.

Adolescents who were adopted as infants are significantly more likely to have a psychiatric disorder than those who were not adopted, a study released Monday has found. The researchers -- emphasizing that most of the adoptees in the study were psychologically healthy and faring well -- the said that as a group those adolescents faced a greater risk for two psychiatric conditions: attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

The science of brain scanning may be on the brink of revolutionizing the intuitive art of psychiatry, one of the few areas of medicine in which a doctor's educated guess is still the most common route to a diagnosis. Brain scanning is still too young a science to be used for routine diagnosis of common psychiatric ills.

Not every emergency room visit involves a physical problem. Out of 95 million visits made to emergency rooms by adults in the U.S. in 2007, 12 million, or 12.5%, had to do with mental disorders, a substance abuse problem, or both. The findings are from a report recently put out by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Of those 12 million visits, about 66% involved patients with mental disorders, about 25% involved patients with substance abuse issues and the rest involved patients who had both a mental disorder and a substance abuse problem.

A "little pink pill" to solve women's sexual problems probably won't be hitting drugstore shelves anytime soon. But that doesn't mean discussion of the need for it, or lack thereof, is likely to end. On June 18, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration recommended against the approval of flibanserin, which had been touted as a female Viagra. The FDA can accept or reject the panel's advice but usually chooses to follow it. In many drug approval proceedings, that would be the end of the matter.