I enjoyed watching this video. However, I didn’t enjoy seeing how the children and parents struggled with mental health problems and the side effects of the drugs. Mental health problem is a rising issue that Americans face now in this day, especially post-pandemic. Since the brain is a complex organ, it is difficult to diagnose specific mental health problems, for instance, bipolar disorder. As mentioned in the video, the biggest challenge for American psychiatrists is how to treat bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a combination of depression and mania episodes. Also, it has two different levels (bipolar I & II), and the same medication can’t treat those different levels of bipolar. How can they distinguish between bipolar and major depressive disorder? They might prescribe meds for major depressive disorder, and that could trigger manic episodes. Therefore, psychiatrists have to be careful when they diagnose and treat the different types of bipolar disorders.
Additionally, from the video, some young children who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder would also prescribed the same medication that adults take. The medication was not tested for the kids to see if it was safe. Parents didn’t know the long-term effects, and some of them caused weight gain, type II diabetes, suicidal ideation, and tick syndrome. The doctors are not 100% sure if the medication is a perfect fit for the kids. They are doing an experiment that means they tried one bipolar medicine, and if that didn’t work, they switched them to another one until they got the right medicine. In my understanding, the reason why this happened is because parent fear and won’t allow their children to go through medication trial studies. Of course! Who would like their child to go through such a study? Why didn’t pharmaceutical industries develop a better approach so the drug could be safe for children? Why not the children’s version instead of prescribing the adult version of antidepressant or bipolar medication? Why don’t they create a kid's version as Tylenol and ibuprofen did?