|
Written by Dr. Leland Heller
|
|
|
Jul 21, 2009 |
A + A - RESET
|
|
QUESTION:
I'm a stepmother of 3 kids, the middle one is in the process of being diagnosed as BPD, she's only SIX. She has threatened and attempted suicide, reportedly "hurts" herself when she's alone and has some learning disabilities that are, according to experts, quite severe. She is a sunny, beautiful child who does seem to view things as black and white, seems in normal interaction to be like any other little girl, but is despondent about her father leaving home and misses him (she sees him often) terribly. She is in therapy, but admitted the other day that she thinks about killing herself all the time, thinks, she's "diseased". Schizophrenia is hereditary, her mother's father and her mother's sister suffer from this. One committed suicide.
How early does this manifest and does one lead to another? What's the best thing we can do? She has been through a battery of tests and we are waiting for the answers, but BPD sounds incredibly close to the mark, and her current psychologist has said the same thing...
DR. HELLER'S ANSWER:
I don't believe that's true. The BPD seems to require puberty to manifest itself. I see a lot of children like that however. The most common diagnoses - and there's usually more than one - are depression with psychotic features, attention deficit disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and the obsessive compulsive disorders. Schizophrenia generally starts much later than this.
Due to it's safety and success profile - and it's effectiveness for rejection sensitivity and unhappiness - I generally start the child on Prozac and use Risperdal ASAP! The Risperdal instruction sheet for children I give the parents will be on this website shortly. Depending upon the diagnosis, a month later I'll treat ADD if present. If Prozac causes hyperness, Buspar is virtually always needed for the GAD.
Occasionally bipolar is indeed present as well, and the combination of Prozac and Risperdal can work very, very well - and very quickly. There are ample scientific literature articles documenting this, although all childhood psychiatric disorders have inadequate scientific trials.
You would likely benefit from my new book "Biological Unhappiness." I go into all these diagnoses at length, and give examples of children similar to yours and how they were successfully treated.
next: BPD and Childhood ~ back to: Borderline Personality Disorder FAQs Table of Contents
|
Top
|
E-mail
|
|
|
Last Updated( Nov 06, 2009 )
|
reviewed by:
Harry Croft, MD (Psychiatrist)
|
|
