How can you tell if your teenager has bipolar disorder? He may seem a bit different from the other children you know and he may not be very communicative so you can’t really tell just what the matter with him is. You probably can’t tell whether it is just a growing phase or whether he needs medical treatment. He’s been like this from the time he was young but it was put down to being hyperactive. Here is a quiz to help you make up your mind to get medical help or not.
This is not a professional quiz. If you can get your child to the doctor if you are worried about his behavior, that’s the best thing to do. But as a parent, there will always be questions about whether it is the right thing to do. Whether what your child is going through is just a natural process. Whether he will grow out of it and all you need to do is to be patient and wait it out. And yet, underneath it all, you have your doubts and you feel that maybe something is wrong. All this test does is to bring what you feel to the fore and to help you decide whether your child has a problem that needs to be attended to.
Go through these few questions and try and be objective. It is tough for most parents but in the ultimate analysis, it’s your child that matters. Answer the questions truthfully and then see if your child needs to go get medical advice. It never helps to hide your head in the sand and pretend the problem does not exist – far better to face it and get him on a course of therapy that will help him in the years to come.
| Yes | No | Maybe | |
| He’s always been a difficult child but things got bad in his teens. | |||
| He has incredible mood swings – he feels high one moment, the next he’s sad and depressed. | |||
| He is hyperactive and finds it very difficult to sit still. | |||
| He finds it difficult to sleep at night and finds it difficult to wake up in the morning. | |||
| He suddenly develops a ravenous appetite. | |||
| He feels that only he and no one else is right all the time. | |||
| There is no reason for his mood swings. | |||
| He sometimes has hallucinations and imagines things. | |||
| There have been suicide attempts because he feels so depressed most of the time. | |||
| He tends to start fights with others. | |||
| He sometimes speaks very loudly and very fast. | |||
| He gets distracted easily. | |||
| He could sometimes tackle jobs that are dangerous and risky. | |||
| He gets aggressive for no reason and resents parental authority. | |||
| When he was younger, he would punch, kick and even bite me and threaten to call the law and complain about me. | |||
| As a child, he suffered from terrifying nightmares. | |||
| My husband’s brother suffers from it. |
If you got more than 7 ticks in the ‘Yes’ column, you need medical attention right away. Like we said, this quiz is just a pointer and will not provide a definite diagnostic answer that your child has bipolar disorder. All it will tell you is that you were right to be worried and you need a qualified doctor to tell you for sure.
One needs to face the fact that bipolar disorder cannot be cured but it need not be endured either. Time was when people just didn’t understand what this disorder was all about but today, medical technology has come a long way. If you have someone in the family who suffers from these symptoms, then all the more reason to check out your child’s behavior as very often, conditions like these are genetic. There are drugs that can control the problem and it makes things so much easier for the person to face the world. It is also easier for everyone around him. Taking him to get professional help is being kind to him – much kinder than if you were to just ignore the problem and let it be, hoping it will go away. Not everyone who has bipolar disorder has it bad – some cases are not as bad as the others. But every case benefits from a medical diagnosis and treatment.
What many parents fear are the side effects of the medication that they hear about. Yes, some of them do have side effects but the relationship between a doctor and his patient will be an ongoing one where you can tell him if there are any bad side effects and he will try and change the medication or its strength so the side effects are minimized or absent. If this condition isn’t treated, your child could be a misfit in this world and you will be doing him a great disservice. So if you find that you have many ‘Yes’ ticks, make that appointment with the doctor now.