Steven Hyman, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S.A., invites and treats with respect the observations and concerns of parents of children with bipolar disorder and other brain disorders. Neither researchers nor parents have a monopoly on the truth. The professional vise-grip on information is rapidly slipping as patients and family members avidly devour the scientific literature available on the Web. We find ourselves, like it or not, on the same team, with different but complementary roles and contributions to make. Our shared mission, surely, is to identify and heal suffering children whose primary afflictions appear to lie on the affective spectrum.
Researchers collect data, but so do parents.
Researchers may have superior skills to analyze data, but we have the children. Parents note things that researchers miss. Develop computerized charting methods by which parents may record observational data at home, transmitted to researchers via the Internet. The possibilities are vast and exciting. Why not intervene long before bipolar illness derails their development like an oncoming train, wrecks their schooling and self-esteem, sends them into the abyss of suicidal despair and hurls many of their genetically vulnerable parents into the same abyss, their own depression triggered by the stress of their children s relentless suffering compounded by the judgment of professionals that they are, somehow, to blame.