Word: bipolarized
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...most kids, the consequences of not identifying the illness can be severe, since the bipolar steamroller gets worse as children get older. Though they tend to be verbally skilled and are often creative, bipolars find school difficult because the background noise of the disorder makes it hard for them to master such executive functions as organizing, planning and thinking problems through. The most serious symptoms may appear when kids reach age 8, just when the academic challenge of grade school starts to be felt. "They're being asked to do things that they're very poor at," Papolos says...
Similar misdiagnoses are made when parents and doctors observe symptoms of the low phase of the bipolar cycle and conclude that a kid is suffering from simple depression. Treat such a child with antidepressants like Prozac, however, and the rejiggering of brain chemistry may trigger mania. Some researchers believe that nearly half of all children thought to be depressed may really be bipolar...
Still, all these natural stressors and the new awareness of the disorder may not be enough to account for the explosion of juvenile bipolar cases. Some scientists fear that there may be something in the environment or in modern lifestyles that is driving into a bipolar state children and teens who might otherwise escape the condition...
...biggest risk factors is drugs. People with a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorders live on an unstable emotional fault line. Jar things too much with a lot of recreational chemistry, and the whole foundation can break away, especially when the drugs of choice are cocaine, amphetamines or other stimulants. "We do think that use of stimulating drugs is playing a part in lowering the age of onset," says Hirschfeld...
Stress too can light the bipolar fuse. Many latent emotional disorders, from depression to alcoholism to anxiety conditions, are precipitated by life events such as divorce or death or even a happy rite of passage like starting college. And bipolar disorder can also be set off this way. "Most of us do not think environmental stress causes the disorder," says Dr. Michael Gitlin, head of the mood-disorders clinic at UCLA. "But it can trigger it in people who are already vulnerable...