Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Investigating the appropriateness of current alcohol-use disorder criteria for adolescents University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine press release - "North American clinicians generally use alcohol-use disorder (AUD) criteria as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). Concerns exist, however, about the appropriateness of these criteria for adolescents. For the first time, a study in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research uses a single representative sample of the U.S. population to examine the effects of age, gender, race/ethnicity, and drinking status on the prevalence of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria among both adolescents and adults."  
  

Introduction to New Research: Understanding the Issues in Child and Adolescent Bipolar Disorder  A new CME unit at Medscape - "Debate still exists in the psychiatric field over whether pediatric bipolar disorder is a valid diagnosis. Many clinical features of this disorder distinguish it from the well-established criteria that define adult-onset bipolar disorder. Perhaps the most salient of these is the high prevalence of irritability as the major presenting symptom as opposed to the euphoria more often seen with the adult disorder. In addition to irritability, pediatric bipolar disorder tends to present with a mixed or continuous presentation of mania in contrast to the discrete manic episodes classically described for bipolar disorder. Research in adults has revealed that bipolar disorder causes high morbidity, with patients symptomatically ill for 47% of the weeks in their life following diagnosis. Depressive symptoms and subsyndromal depression predominate a patient's life with this disorder..." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].