Diagnosing the Child

Running Head: Diagnosing the child

The Bipolar Child                                                        

                        Brookdale Community College

                        Tawana Jones

                                 Abstract

Bipolar disorder, also known as maniac depression is a brain disorder that has been affecting kids of all ages for years. Suffering from both mania and depression mood swings these unusual shifts can affect child as they grow older. Some of the symptoms can resemble normal childhood behavior which makes it hard to diagnose.  Some feel as is children are shouldn’t be diagnosed and treated and others feel as if they are misdiagnosed. Should bipolar disorder be diagnosed and treated in children?

Bipolar disorder is a brain disorder also known as maniac depressive illness. It affects the brain causing dramatic shifts in a person’s mood, energy level, and ability to function... Bipolar is generally chronic or a long term physiological disease. This disorder affects children and adults of all ages in which an individual’s mood can go from high and energetic to sad and hopelessness in minutes. These mood swings can last minutes, hours, or even days.

Bipolar disorder is more commonly found in older teens and adults, however, children as young as age six can develop the disorder. When children develop the disorder early in life this is called early onset bipolar disorder. In early onset, this type of bipolar disorder tends to be more severe than in teens or adults.  Many of the symptoms in children with bipolar disorder are similar to conduct disorder; attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or just normal childhood behaviors (Abramowitz, 2005). When bipolar disorder begins before or just after puberty, it tends to be more characterized by more continuous maniac and depressive episodes and to have rapid cycling rather than stable periods between episodes (Paolos, 1999).