The myth of the bipolar child contd. - Jerome Groopman's 2007 "must read" article

Phillip Blumberg, a psychotherapist in Manhattan, told me, “Psychological diagnosis is, in essence, a story. If you have a mood disorder, there is the fear, the shame, and the confusion—the stigma— associated with it, so you want to grab on to the most concrete and clear story you can. There is something about the clarity of bipolar disease, particularly its biological basis, which is incredibly soothing and seductive.”

Blumberg, who for two years was a vice-president at ABC Motion Pictures, believes that advertising by pharmaceutical companies has influenced the public’s view of bipolar disorder.

(Eli Lilly, in particular, has come under fire for its marketing practices. The drug company is currently the subject of lawsuits that claim that the company attempted to hide Zyprexa’s side effects, and promoted the drug for off-label uses. Lilly has denied the accusations.)

Blumberg described recent ads, for drugs like Zyprexa, that include a list of symptoms characteristic of the disorder. “But, of course, we all have these symptoms,” he said. “Sometimes we’re irritable. Sometimes we’re excited and elated, and we don’t know why. With every form of advertising, the first goal is to make people feel insecure. Usually, they are made to feel insecure about their smell or their looks. Now we are beginning to see this in psychiatric advertising. The advertisements make frenetic, driven parents feel insecure about the behavior of their children.”

Blumberg noted that he had seen instances of the disorder in some children, and that it was a real and serious diagnosis. But he also cited the mounting pressure on children, particularly in the middle and upper classes, to succeed, first at private or selective public schools, and then at exclusive colleges and universities.

“These kids become very well turned-out products,” he said. “They live to have résumés. They don’t have résumés because they live.” Parents may fear that children who behave in an eccentric way are at a disadvantage, and in turn pressure the pediatrician or the psychiatrist to come up with a diagnosis and offer a treatment. “Then an industry grows up around it. This, then, enters as truth in the popular imagination.”

Read the whole article here.