By Rosalie Greenberg, M.D.; 294 pages. From the cover: "A child psychiatrist with twenty-five years' experience offers advice and understanding for parents of bipolar children."
Call this The Bipolar Child-lite. It's shorter, more easy-going, informative but not overwhelming. That's great, if you need to ease into the subject, or just want more ideas and encouragement. But it's also light on nuts-and-bolts, nitty-gritty advice for those in the trenches. Still, there are worse ways to pass your time than swapping stories with an amiable and appreciative psychiatrist.
- Amiable and easy to read
- Much more appreciative of parents than many psychiatrist-penned books
- Uses experiences of children and families to illustrate points
- Views bipolar kids as having strengths along with their weaknesses
- Much shorter and lighter reading than "The Bipolar Child"
- Much less content-filled than "The Bipolar Child," too
- Readers who dislike case studies may find too many here
- May cause regret that your child's therapist isn't as warm and insightful as this one
- Upbeat and non-alarmist tone may make bipolar disorder seem less devastating than you experience it
- Chapter 1: Listen to the Words, Not Just the Music
- Chapter 2: Depression and Mania: Riding the Mood Pendulum
- Chapter 3: The Hidden Aspects of Bipolar Disorder
- Chapter 4: How Bipolar Kids Shine
- Chapter 5: The Psychiatric Evaluation: Finding a Doctor and Examining Your Child's Symptoms
- Chapter 6: Comorbidity: Is This Bipolar Disorder or Something Else?
- Chapter 7: Medication: The Art and Science of Treatment
- Chapter 8: Why Therapy Matters
- Chapter 9: Hospitalization: When Therapy and Medication Aren't Enough
- Chapter 10: Going to School: Easier Said Than Done
Chapter 11: Real Life, Real Answers
"Listen to the words, not just the music."
That's a great piece of advice shared by Dr. Greenberg in this agreeable, case-study heavy book on bipolar disorder in children. It's good advice for parents dealing with mood swings and tantrums from BP kids, but also for parents of children with many different types of special needs. She advises tuning out all the drama and the screaming and the acting out -- the "music" -- and focus in on what the child is saying. It's a good way to figure out when fear or discomfort or frustration is driving behavior, because those are things you can do something about.
This book has a fair amount of calming and focusing advice like this, presented in an amiable way by a psychiatrist who seems to genuinely like the children she works with and their parents. Stories from those children fill the book, and they are blessedly free of the sort of "here's what the parents were doing wrong, and then I, the all-knowing professional, set them straight" tone that too often taints such case studies. The whole book has a feel of sitting down to a series of chats with a warm and well-intentioned doctor who wants you to know that, as overwhelming as your child's problems may be, you can deal with them.
That's worth a lot. But there's lots more you're going to need to really get through all this with your child. The Bipolar Child, the definitive text on the subject, casts such a very large shadow, and contains so very much more information on every aspect of early-onset BP. It can be an intimidating book, and I faulted it in my review for maybe going on at too great length. But if you're going to read one book on the subject, that's the one it should be. If you're going to read two, or three, or everything you can get your hands on, Bipolar Kids is certainly worth a spot on your stack.
