Bipolar disorder affects mood, whereas attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Children and teens with ADHD typically have problems with cognitive functioning, distractibility and completing tasks/assignments. Bipolar disorder in this age group causes mood swings, which can move from manic (or hypomanic) to depressive lows. An ADHD child is inattentive due to his or her inability to focus on any one thing for a period of time. Conversely, a bipolar child going through a depressive state may be inattentive because he/she has lost any desire to care about the activity.
Children with bipolar experience explosive rage. Different from anger, it is sudden and usually without provocation and can last for hours. It is closer to a seizure than an emotional event in that it is difficult to control. Children and teens with ADHD have temper tantrums and they typically don’t lose touch with reality or destroy property. As well, their angry outbursts are generally short in duration.
In a bipolar child, abnormal moods are intense—either low energy (depression) or high energy (mania). They have a more profound response to life events that can be out of proportion to the event, whereas the reaction to events in the lives of children with ADHD is generally considered expected and in relation to the event and less severe and intense.
Moods for children with ADHD may come and go, and generally they don’t stay in a particular depressed or manic state. Bipolar children, on the other hand, have deep, life-disrupting manic feelings. Depression or mania can last for weeks or longer and these ongoing symptoms can cause significant life problems in key areas i.e. friends, school, at home.
In bipolar mania, children and teens can exhibit grandiosity where they believe and insist they are the best in the world at something and then engage in risky behavior because of this. They may also need less sleep than other children. These children usually have racing thoughts, and affected speech. However, instead of grandiosity, children with ADHD are more prone to poor self-esteem due to negative feedback from adults regarding their behavior. They are also energetic when hyper but do not report racing thoughts.
A type of antipsychotic medication given to a bipolar child in a manic episode helps lower and even out the child’s energy level. As well, when a bipolar child in a depressive episode is given antidepressant, their mood typically improves after a few weeks and their energy and attention returns. Conversely, a child with ADHD is given a stimulant, which works more quickly than an antidepressant or antipsychotic medication and is able to better focus, with lower energy levels within a few days.
code: bphopekids
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This is a few years old so I understand these comparisons may come from ignorance but I think this truly highlights why there are so many (especially women) who were misdiagnosed with BPD instead of ADHD. Intense emotions, mood swings, destruction of property, and impulsivity (which can look like mania), are all common features of ADHD which is a spectrum.
I am a psychologist and some of what’s in this article concerns me. The last paragraph in particular is written such that it may confuse non professionals about medications. First people with bipolar disorder don’t take a mood stabilizer only when manic and then switch to an antidepressant when in the depressed part of the cycle. A mood stabilizer is constant and an antidepressant may or may not be added also as a constant. Further SSRIs (a type of antidepressant focused specifically on the level of serotonin) are known to provoke manic episodes when used as a stand alone drug for people with bipolar disorder. On the ADHD medication front, many people have been found to have anger symptoms as a result of taking Adderall. A different stimulant may be more helpful or a different class of ADHD medication may be called for, such as Intuniv. Finally the clinical picture can be even more complicated in a child with both depressive disorder and ADHD where some of the symptoms are hyperactive as that can look like a mixed episode of bipolar disorder, especially the type that has hypomania (lower elevation mania). It’s important that the information be clear.
What does affected speech mean in #6?
Please do not make your child who is bipolar suffer without medication. They cannot control this and it is like denying your child insulin if they are diabetic. It will not get better on its own. Please medicate.
A new disorder in DSM 5 is used instead of diagnosing bipolar disorder in children. It’s called Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD). I’m surprised the author didn’t use DMDD instead of bipolar, unless this article was published before 2013.