Rapid rise in bipolar diagnoses among U.S. youth

That percentage is of completely untreated people ? I’d like the source referencing that, because it is true that some drugs can increase the risk of suicide.

http://www.medicationsense.com/articles/april_june_04/underlying_cause.html

From the article:
Yet the doctor had no clue that it was a dose-related reaction to the very drug she had prescribed for herself. What did she do? Exactly what she and other doctors tell patients to do: stick it out until the drug’s benefits kick in. This is ridiculous, dangerous advice, but it’s the medical mainstream’s party line. Indeed, the doctor described talking to colleagues, who were similarly perplexed by her symptoms. It is very disturbing to think that there are psychiatrists out there who can’t recognize the most basic adverse effects of these antidepressants. Every psychiatrist I asked about this immediately identified the symptoms as SSRI side effects and recommended discontinuing the drug or at least decreasing the dosage, so at least some psychiatrists know what they are doing. But not enough, apparently.
...
Studies have shown that only a small percentage of patients get enough information in doctors’ offices to fulfill informed consent. With SSRI antidepressants, such negligence can be lethal.

Again, there is no reference point to “normal” in terms of numbers or ranges of physical attributes.

http://clinicalstudies.info.nih.gov/detail/A_2006-M-0215.html
Note how they define “normal” in this study. It’s a behavioral diagnosis, not a reference to physical data.

The next time you hear a doctor talk about “chemical imbalances” or PET scan abnormalities, ask them what are the “normal” ranges ? How about when someone’s happy, sad, just cruisin’ along, etc etc.

There is no such research.

As I said before, someday we may know but we don’t yet. We’re still looking, and until we have a better idea psychiatry needs to stop deceiving the general public.

I completely agree that physical causes should be investigated as part of the treatment for mental illnesses. I do disagree, however, that medication be withheld until the lack of a physical cause is determined, because most mental illnesses do not have an underlying cause. Besides, by the time most people get to see a psychiatrist, they are at the end of their rope and if they're turned away without meds and sent to undergo various brain scans (which insurance may not pay for or, more likely, isn't even available within 1,000 miles) or blood tests, they may commit suicide.

Here are a few links that you might be interested in:

Remember that this kind of imaging is only in the experimental stages right now and is not available to the general public. Someday they will be and someday there may even be equipment small and affordable enough for psychiatrists to have them in their offices.

Remember also that there have many illnesses over the centuries for which there were no physical tests, yet doctors managed to diagnose them correctly because of the symptoms. Just because a test does not exist for an illness does not mean that the illness is made-up.

Thanks for the link on the recent murder committed by someone on antidepressants. Yes, sometimes people sometimes will commit suicide or engage in other destructive behavior after taking medications like antidepresants. However, those instances are extremely rare. Many more lives are saved than are lost by putting someone on medication. For example, 10-15% of people with untreated bipolar disorder commit suicide. However, a far, far less percentage of people treated by bipolar medications commit suicide.

I’d like the source referencing that, because it is true that some drugs can increase the risk of suicide.

That corollary is contrived. It's like observing that people are more likely to die in hospitals than anywhere else, or that women are far more likely to get breast cancer. People who take antidepressants are more likely to commit suicide, because those antidepressants are more likely to be perscribed to patients who are already suicidal in the first place.

In any case, we are talking about bipolar here, and antidepressants are not commonly perscribed to bipolar individuals (except on a short-term basis). They don't work very well, and mood-stabilizers are usually enough to prevent dibilitating depression. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to understand that bipolar patients who take antidepressants run the risk of leapfrogging into a manic or mixed manic state. Anyone who has actually experienced the disease will tell you that depression is preferrable to the other two. Don't confuse chronic depression with bipolar depression. The two are very different.

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