Diagnosing bipolar disorder in adolescents isn’t easy because, well, what teenager doesn’t have mood swings?
The importance of early diagnosis cannot be stressed enough, though, said Dr. Aleah Gibson, a family medicine doctor at St. Elizabeth Physicians’ Aurora, Ind., office. That’s because adolescents with mental health disorders have a much higher rate of death than their peers due to suicide, drug overdose or other accidents.
Early intervention can help prevent these deaths, but, many times, the symptoms of bipolar disorder in an adolescent look almost identical to typical teenage angst: personality change, becoming suddenly withdrawn, no longer communicating with friends, and taking himself or herself out of sports or extracurricular activities.
Also, other conditions such as anxiety disorders, substance abuse, personality disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have very similar symptoms, Gibson said.
“You have to be careful not to misdiagnose children,” she said. “They don’t communicate the way adults do and it’s more difficult for young people than adults to voice what they’re feeling, so, oftentimes, it’s harder to get a specific history from them and questions answered because they just don’t know. So, it can be very hard to get a diagnosis.”
According to the American Psychiatric Association, bipolar disorder is defined by episodes of mania (abnormally elevated mood or irritability) or hypomania (abnormally elevated mood or irritability with a decrease or increase in functional ability for four or more days) alternating with episodes of depression. The episodes must cause a severe functional impairment to a person’s life and symptoms have to be present for seven or more days. People with bipolar disorder also can have psychotic (anything that is an alteration of the person’s perception, thoughts, mood or behavior) symptoms as part of mania that last for seven or more days.
With May as Mental Health Month, Gibson wants to stress to parents that they need to pay attention. If your teenager is showing behaviors that are concerning, mention it to his or her pediatrician or family medicine doctor, she said.
“Although there’s always a delay between the onset of illness and getting mental health services, when you’re talking about bipolar disorder, there can be a longer lag between the onset of symptoms and getting help because the symptoms aren’t that out of the normal,” Gibson said.
If your teenager is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a pediatrician can help connect him or her with mental health services. Those can include medications such as antipsychotics and individual therapy and family interventions.
