1970s - Doctors in Sweden and the U.S. begin using lithium to treat children as young as five with good results. An increasing number of case reports and medical journal articles describe children as young as age three with a continuous pattern of behavior and mood disorder, often in families with history of bipolar illness, whose symptoms improve greatly when treated with lithium. 1973 - First use of anticonvulsants in treatment of bipolar disorder. 1975 - The National Institute of Mental Health Conference on Depression in Childhood officially recognizes depression in children. 1995 - Trudy Carlson publishes first account of a child's life with bipolar disorder as The Suicide of My Son .
More psychiatrists begin to diagnose and treat the disorder successfully in children.