What’s Wrong With a Child? Psychiatrists Often Disagree - New York Times

[ NYTimes] Katherine Finn, a 14-year-old who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., said she was grateful for the growing awareness of the disease. Possessed by feelings of worthlessness as early as the fourth grade, Katherine said that by the sixth grade she "threw my sanity out the window." She became impulsive, loud, and abrasive, she said, adding, "I would blurt things out in class, I would moo like a cow, act like a little kid, just say the most random stuff." A psychiatrist promptly diagnosed the problem as bipolar disorder, after learning that there was a history of the disease on her mother's side of the family. Katherine began taking drugs that blunted the extremes in her mood, and she now is doing well at a new school.


Is there weight to the argument that when we don't know anything for sure about a problem then not doing anything to solve it is as good as doing something (totally random) to solve it ?  Mathematically this might be accurate assuming not doing anything might qualify as a solution. Like in the case of kids it is possible that their hormones settle down and they lose all the symptoms. Medicating them would have taken them down the wrong road. For a problem like "not being able to find a job" it is painfully obvious that this is not a solution.