The validity of Paediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) as a clinical diagnosis is at the centre of an ongoing controversy. The diagnostic difficulties of PBD and its clinical ramifications exemplify some of the broader tensions within psychiatry between phenomenological and biological schemas, and the challenges we face in marrying the two to meaningfully inform diagnosis and management. At the same time the discussions surrounding this diagnosis highlights the urgency to effectively treat serious psychiatric disorders within the context of having a limited understanding of the underlying mechanisms that drive the development of these illnesses. Recently, debate concerning the reliability and validity of PBD as a diagnosis has once again come to the fore – revealing some of the deep‐seated problems within psychiatry, and so here we provide a few insights and suggest ways forward.

中文翻译：

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精神病学（QuiP）中的问题：小儿双相情感障碍是否是有效的诊断？

小儿双相情感障碍（PBD）作为临床诊断的有效性是正在进行的争论的中心。PBD的诊断困难及其临床后果说明了精神病学在现象学和生物学模式之间存在的一些更广泛的紧张关系，以及我们在将两者结合以有意义地为诊断和管理提供信息时所面临的挑战。同时，围绕该诊断的讨论凸显了在对导致这些疾病发展的潜在机制的认识有限的情况下有效治疗严重精神疾病的紧迫性。最近，关于PBD作为诊断的可靠性和有效性的争论再次浮出水面–揭示了精神病学中一些根深蒂固的问题，