i want to know if my son has bipolar

[grazerus]

My son has been diagnosed with O.D.D an A.D.D he has NO hyperactivity.He is now 15 and he is NASTY an ANGRY all the time exept with his friens . Althogh He has his moments with them too. He has trouble controllng anger. Has temper tantrums. an is very "detached" from us. He is in counseling an also did try some small amount of drugs. He has done very well stayng away from the rugs and has had consistant random drug tests that are negative. He says he has decied to stop drugs an drinkig but will not give up smoking. reg cigarettes.  He takes ABILIFY an FOCALIN. I want to be sure this is the best treatment plam and medicine for hi,

[ILADVOCATE]

I agree with the other post but in addition to that he might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. You could ask about that. Even smoking cigarettes is a hard habit to stop and it is beyond the standard addiction but for some people with a psychiatric disability they are researching the physical need for this and are developing adjunct antipsychotics now in clinical study that stimulate the nicotine receptors in the brain without the harm of cigarettes. Either way besides proper medication talk therapy is essential and manipulative behavior and what appears to be acting out can be part of a psychiatric disability and its best to react to and treat it as such rather than just bad behavior.

[Xila31]

Well, I know they use Abilify to treat bipolar, but my doctor says it can be activating for mania in some people. Mania can be dysphoric and irritable mania (as opposed to euphoric mania, which is happy life of the party type.) Also stimulants for ADD can be activating for bipolar.

So, it would be best to talk to his psychiatrist about this to get the best options. The problem with bipolar is that there are hundreds of combination of medications and everyone is different, so no two people do well on the same combination. It makes bipolar very complicated and difficult to treat.