Children on Too Much Medicine?

I was watching a replay of a Frontline episode about children being medicated with mood altering drugs. Many of the drugs have not been tested on children, and doctors are just experimenting to see what, if anything, will work to help the child. Also, they pointed out the enormous rise in children being diagnosed with mood disorders, especially bipolar.

Strides have been made to improve the impact upon children, but I began to wonder:

• How can a doctor prescribe a drug that has not been tested on the patient type?
• Why is there such a large rise in children with mood disorders?
• Are we really able to diagnose better, or are we over-diagnosing?
• Are environmental issues impacting the children’s mood?
• Is diet playing a part?
• Why the large increase in children with disorders? I don’t remember that many 35, 25, or even 10 years ago. What has changed?
• Some children seem to be exhibiting normal childhood acting out. Are they? Are parents too quick to think a pill will fix the child instead of correcting bad behavior and modeling good behavior themselves?