Upper Iowa University
August 3rd, 2014
Abstract
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious mental illness in which a person’s mood will alternate between mania and depression; and where what would be considered common emotions will become powerfully as well as unpredictably exaggerated. Bipolar disorder is also referred to as manic-depressive illness. While bipolar disorder is less common than depression at least fifteen percent of the people with bipolar disorder commit suicide. In the case of Adolescents and particularly Teens with bipolar disorder; they can quickly swing from extreme happiness and full of energy to sadness, fatigue, and a state of confusion. Bipolar disorder is made up of manic episodes and with abnormally elevated or irritable moods that last for at least a week and can impair normal daily function. Not all people with Bipolar disorder will become depressed. Within the last ten years the rate of children diagnosed adolescents and children with bipolar disorder has had a dramatic increase. In 2001 roughly 100,000 children were being medicated for BD in the United States and now more than doubled in for outpatient, residential, and inpatient treatment facilities. Many people with bipolar disorder have the ability to function normally between episodes; with the help of medications known as “mood stabilizers” that are prescribed by their psychologists.
Children and adolescents experience many emotional and developmental changes as a result of growth and hormonal changes especially as they enter into the teenage years and early adulthood. It can be difficult to determine at times if your child is going through a “phase” or if they are showing signs of a more serious personality disorder like Bipolar. It has been only in the past 10 years that the increase in number of children receiving the diagnosis of bipolar disorder has grown substantially.
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