Bipolar disorder - kids/teens

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly save the thousands on a neuropsychiatric profile. That’s for getting an IEP or testing accommodations. Mental health diagnoses are a bunch of symptoms and can change all the time with youth. Plus you’ll need funds for future mental health interventions.

A lot of youth special needs is a sunny happy ending of the right treatment leading to normal life. The serious mental illnesses, which this could be, are a long adult struggle. Treatments are primitive and have low efficacy. By all means try and avoid drug abuse—itll exacerbate mental illness.

I disagree with this. Both my kids have experienced mental illness. Neuropsychological assessment was very useful for teasing out learning disabilities and ADHD and understanding how those issues were impacting depression, anxiety, etc.

[Anonymous]

Do NOT skip the neuropsychiatric evaluation. Certain diagnosis will help her with treatment and insurance, especially autism.

Also, I will tell you this. Get her on continuous birth control and keep the hormones balanced. No placebo week. Most up to date pediatricians will prescribe this. My daughter is on it for a recent diagnosis of PMDD. Teen girls with ADHD are 3x more likely to have PMDD and it concurs often.

[Anonymous]

Once you have an adult you’ll find mental health benefits drying up fast.

Just watch how much you’re spending….if you need a high quality setting pair out of pocket you can be thousands and thousands of dollars in costs. A neuropsych only helps milder cases, oddly enough. Stronger bipolar will be a medication trial and error journey.

[Anonymous]

I don't have kids, but I have bipolar disorder and can tell you how it manifested when I was a kid.

First came the depression. I was sent to the school counselor in 4th grade, and when I asked why I had to be pulled out to see the counselor I was told "Because you don't seem to be a very happy little girl." I had bouts from there on. I can remember the summer after 7th grade I got up, went to lie on the floor in front of the tv, and did little else all summer; my mother was worried and called my friends to come over and get me outside. Bouts like that, usually lasting months, my whole life. First hospitalization for SI at 14.

I don't think I saw hypomania until my mid teens. I would play my favorite music until very late into the night and dance around my room literally bouncing off of the walls. Now I know that if I were to be up dancing around at 3am it would be mania for sure lol, but back then I just thought I liked dancing to New Order. I also had a few incidents when younger where I had hyperreligiosity. No doctors asked questions about mania in ways that would have led me to discuss these things though. So until I was 30 or so, doctors just thought I had depression. It was definitely bipolar all along.

It is very manageable with medication, but the medications available are pretty horrific for most of us (2GAs will take years off of your life and make you potentially more miserable than you were to begin with -- but that's a whole other story).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One flag for my kid who later had schizophrenia was intolerance of ADHD stimulants. We tried them one time at a young age and had immediate overwhelming crying. It was terrible and he never took stimulants again. Other than that a pretty typical mix of ADHD, anxiety, autism stuff.

Bipolar patients have similar poor reactions to stimulants.

Some do, some don't. Just like with antidepressants -- some get manic from them, some don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister tried to commit suicide as a freshman in college she was diagnosed then with bi polar disorder.

When she was 13 they knew she needed help they never got her any.

She is now 51 and never got help. She has created a life for herself but I will have zero contact with her. She's even an associate professor at a very well known college and married.

That is pathetic of you as a sister by the way - it's your parents fault. Not hers

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