Abstract

This issue of the Hastings Center Report includes a special report that comes out of a three-year Hastings Center research project on controversies surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in children. Over the last couple of decades, the number of children diagnosed with mental disorders has risen significantly, and so, too, has the number of children prescribed medications. Some critics have accused psychiatry of overdiagnosis—of sometimes diagnosing children with psychiatric disorders when their behavior is actually within the range of normal. This controversy led Erik Parens and Josie Johnston, authors of the report and the Hastings Center investigators in this project, to ask what a ..