I am the parent of a 10-year-old who has been diagnosed as bipolar.

There, I wrote it.

It wasn’t easy. And I’m sure that someone, somewhere, will read this and tell me what a terrible parent I am. That I should rule with a firm hand. That I should not give my child pharmaceuticals to regulate her moods. That the world of child psychiatry is ruled by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

An article in Monday’s Los Angeles Times -- “Are We Too Quick to Medicate Children?” (www.latimes.com/features/la-he-psychkids5nov05,0,4453070.story?coll=la-tot-features&track=ntothtml) -- all but tells me that. Hoping against hope, I read the story, thinking it might provide a balanced look at dealing with children and mental illness.

But there’s no balance in this debate. The article notes that “Mental-health professionals have long warned that the stigma of mental illness and the cost of its treatment have left millions of Americans with psychiatric disorders to suffer untreated.”

In the same paragraph, it cites critics who say child psychiatry is in the middle of a “scourge of overdiagnosis” and warns that people will be less likely to “accept youthful misfits for who they are and to help them adapt without prescribing drugs or attaching labels.”

"I don't want to face her as an adult and say I didn't do everything I could to make her well. I feel like I'm answering to her future self," says the parent of an 11-year-old girl. "But so much of this is a crapshoot. No one wants to feel that their child is a guinea pig."

I know how that parent feels. It was an agonizing decision to have our child treated for her disorder, to see her have to take four drugs every day. It’s also agonizing to see this sweet, smart, gifted child whose brain runs 10,000 mph derail, overwhelmed by anger, anxiety, or an internal/external blip in her universe that appears from nowhere.

It’s agonizing to see how her moods affect her siblings and the rest of her family, to know that – like clockwork – something bad will happen if she doesn’t take her meds by a certain time because she just can’t maintain control. Not won’t, but can’t.

It’s just as agonizing to see how many who are so quick to judge, to say that what’s right for them should be right for everyone else. Just look in the comments section after the article and you’ll see what I mean.

The Times article, like countless others, raises legitimate questions about a legitimate debate. But it fails to capture the nuance and the internal struggles parents face when they make decisions like this. If our children are our future, we owe it to them to do everything we can, without casting blanket judgments on others.

Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief