Bipolar, autistic, ADHD—why so many?

Posted Oct 22, 2008 by Donna Koehn

Updated Oct 22, 2008 at 10:16 AM

The number of kids leaving a doctor’s office with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder has increased 40 times over the past decade. The illness is marked by dramatic swings in mood from mania to depression.

Additionally, 1 in 150 kids has autism, and more than 4.4 million U.S. children have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Some people sense we’re simply better at detecting problems nowadays; others argue it’s the drug companies pushing for new customers. Many parents blame a preservative added to vaccines their children received as babies, others think it’s lead, pollution or other environmental causes.

To me, it seems something is causing our generation’s kids to develop neurodevelopmental disorders at a scary and perplexing rate.

One piece of the puzzle is emerging. Last month’s issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the Journal of American Medical Association journals, reports that the increase in bipolar disorder may be related to the older age of fathers.

Such a link already has been discovered for schizophrenia and autism.

The risk begins after the age of 29 and increases as men age. The description of how this happens is complicated, but boiled down, it’s like this: As men get older, destructive DNA mutations replicate and therefore increase in numbers. Women are born with all their eggs, so there is no increase in mutations over time.

Children who are born to fathers 55 and older are 1.37 times more likely to have bipolar disorder than those whose fathers are in their 20s. The scientists were careful to rule out other factors that could cause this.

Knowing the why on this one doesn’t really help us figure out what to do about it. Certainly many men aren’t ready to be fathers in their 20s, and no one is suggesting they rush into that. There are many reasons to delay parenthood, but here’s one that says earlier sometimes is better.