Library Journal Review

Formerly known as manic-depressive illness, bipolar disorder (BPD) has become a headliner for pharmaceutical houses, psychiatric research and publications, and, now, books for the general public. But only in the last decade has the disorder been studied and treated extensively in the child and adolescent population, where it may account for as many as a third of those diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and half of all those diagnosed with depression. Well-informed parents, psychiatrists and pediatricians, and teachers and school administrators are indispensable to monitoring the disorder, hence the need for good books like these. The first author listed for each book, Demitri F. Papolos (psychiatry, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, NY; codirector, Prog. in Behavioral Genetics) and Faedda, are New York psychiatrists; their coauthors, Janice Papolos and Austin, are a writer and a child psychologist, respectively. Somewhat more technical, The Bipolar Child includes a substantial chapter on genetics. Parenting a Bipolar Child primarily addresses families of patients and states correctly that psychotherapy is crucial to the success of overall treatment. These two books are highly recommended for general libraries and health collections, along with two more that are broader in scope: Dwight L. Evans and Linda Wasmer Andrews's If Your Adolescent Has Depression or Bipolar Disorder and and Glen R. Elliot's Medicating Young Minds. E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.