Analysis Of The Medicated Child

The documentary “The Medicated Child” gave me a lot of insight into the lives of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When we hear and learn about bipolar disorder, we do not normally think of children. However, there are many children diagnosed with bipolar disorder ranging from all ages. As we saw in the documentary, bipolar disorder can be very hard on both the child and the family, so finding a cure that is effective and safe is important. The video also highlighted how little research there has been on the effectiveness of antidepressants on children.
I thought the video was very memorable because it showed how young these kids were and they were already taking multiple pills each day. It is sad to me that these children will likely spend most of their lives on medication. Also, the little girl, Jessica, really stuck out to me. I had never seen such a violent thought come from a four year old, it was something you would never expect because most people don’t recognize that kids can have bipolar disorder too. The meaningful and powerful part of the movie to me was that a little girl died in the night as a result of all the medications she was prescribed. That was very shocking to me because

The book and documentary talked about the biological cause of bipolar disorder. The brain structure is different in those with bipolar disorder than those without it. They both touched on how there is a question about doctors over diagnosing bipolar disorder in children. They also both talked about how people with bipolar disorder are given many medications. Once they are given medication, those same medications give a person side effects that require them to take more medication. This was referred to as domino effect. Also, many of the drugs given to these children are not tested or approved for children. This treatment was also discussed in the book, as well as psychotherapy (Comer