The last time we did an entire issue on ADHD was in September of 2006. In this brief article, we’ll bring you up to date on some recent developments.

Dr. Fassler, you are a child psychiatrist and you testified at the original FDA hearings leading to the black box warnings on antidepressants. Can you give us some insight into how that process played out?

The controversy over pediatric bipolar disorder has heated up over the past year. A recent study offers evidence for those favoring “narrow” criteria for the pediatric bipolar diagnosis.

Dr. Diller, as a behavioral pediatrician you certainly prescribe stimulants and other psychiatric medications to children, but at the same time you have spent much of your career speaking and writing about some the potential negative consequences of the excessive use of stimulants. You’ve also studied the history of stimulant use, and have thought about how this can inform our decisions now.

We’ve all noticed the trend: children are increasingly being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This issue is controversial, because psychiatrists are already accused of overmedicating children.