Bipolar disorder typically manifests itself from puberty to early adulthood. Due to media sensation, bipolar disorder is the new ADHD and many misdiagnoses have been made. Seeing as most normal children exhibit bipolar symptoms, it is an extremely difficult diagnosis to make. This article covers prepubescent bipolar only. If your child is past puberty, use the adult sections of identifybipolardisorder.com.
Symptoms
The most easily identifiable trait in bipolar children is hypersexuality. Overly sexual children will make inappropriate sexual comments to adults or other children and touch or want to touch them in inappropriate places.
Another trait involves sleep patterns. If your child goes through periods of needing much less sleep than a normal child, this is a warning sign. Young children need much more sleep than adults and one needing sleep only four hours a night should raise red flags.
Most other symptoms such as hitting and acting out are common to most children and may be normal behavior or indicative of another disorder, even something as simple as food allergies.
Diagnosis
A mood chart is the most effective way to identify child bipolar disorder. A simple pocket scheduler can be used and behavior can be recorded every hour or as needed. If a child is overly excited at say 5pm and despondent at 7pm, or goes through what seems like depression for a few days and then mania, you will be able to look through the scheduler and establish bipolar patterns. This is also helpful when you go to a child psychiatrist as children act very differently around various people and he/she doesn’t know your child nearly as well as you do.
Use a scale of 1-10, with five as normal, ten as extreme mania and 1 as extreme depression. Be specific and write in specific behaviors for each hour that you monitor.
Watching for bipolar symptoms in your child does not have to be an exhausting process and can be completed in less than ten minutes a day.
Treatments:
There are no reliable treatments for childhood bipolar other than therapy. Do not give your child under the age of 18 anti-psychotics unless they are at severe risk of suicide without drugs. These drugs are meant for adults, not children, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Diet can help immensely, so put your child on fish oil.