This can be quite a controversial topic for a person who is a parent, and for the doctor who is involved with the child being treated under their care. Children are being put on medications that they could not need just because they might be classified as having ADHD or bipolar disorder. All children develop, react, and cognitively function in different ways, some children learn faster than others and some have a slower learning rate. John Ronson tackles the notion that some children are being diagnosed with mental disorders they do not have in his book, The Psychopath Test. Ronson goes so far as to suggest that some parents are letting their children be put on these medications so they would not have to deal with their own children's hyper activeness or problems. Ronson explains that some psychiatrists are misdiagnosing children under seven with bipolar disorder when there is no clear scientific evidence that children under seven even experience this at that young of an age. .
In Chapter 10 of The Psychopath Test, Ronson refers to the DSM-V as having, "too many unrealistic mental diagnoses or disorders", some diagnoses for example in the DSM-V were Internet Addiction, or even being a homosexual. It was easy for any kind of person no matter what type of personality to go through the DSM-V and easily self-diagnose themselves as having one or two of any of these mental disorders but who says that these are factual and even exist? Ronson dared to challenge the idea of the DSM-V and how it related to psychologists writing off that children all have ADHD or bipolar disorder. Ronson interviewed a well-respected child psychiatrist named Ian Goodyer who clearly stated, "The USA over diagnoses many things and childhood bipolar is the latest, but perhaps the most worrying given the implications". Goodyer (ch.10, p. 243) explained to Ronson that he believes that bipolar disorder emerges more from late adolescence and that it is very unlikely that you'll find it in children under seven years of age.
