Is it possible that my 8 year old could have bipolar

[hell1971]

Hi My 8 year old girl has always been a difficult child since birth, until she was three we were told she had milk and soya intolerance, she used to cry for hours and clench her tummy, her mood seem to run in cycles, good one week, terrible the next, eventually at three when her tantrums were hours long and she constantly complained of tummy ache neck ache shoulder ache and she got very upset and scared all the time she was diagnosed with sensory issues with an GAD anxiety disorder, yes she suffers from anxiety but only when she is going through a bad period, now 8 and still we have periods of very low mood she complains of symptomatic complaints, withdraws from friends, doesnt want to go to school ect.. then she can cope better and starts doing normal kid stuff but is still very contrary, one minute happy next having a 1-3 hour meltdown, she is irritable, tired and very aggressive to her siblings. During her really bad times since she was five she has expressed that she wants to die and says she wants to kill herself, She is being assessed again and they have said its not typical behaviour for anxiety, she is having an eeg. She is an A student and she has very little problems at school ect.. sadness and not wanting to join in but thats all. we have been reassured that they are going to investigate everything this time as like us they feel it has gone on too long. We have three other children who do not suffer like her. As parents we find it hard to understand and manage her whilst ensuring the other children dont become overwhelmed by the situation, we have been told that they will also do some work with the younger sibling as she is most effected, they have put it to a board and have said they have further assesments to do. I think she is baffling them also, when they do an assesment they expect her to respond in a certain way and she doesnt do what they expect so they arnt saying much at this point and I feel helpless. I feel that she has waited long enough to grow out of it and I am concerned what impact this will have on her long term. She is a very lovable child with an outstanding forward thinking intelligence, I think sometimes this is some of the problem, she doesnt have the emotional maturity to cope with her thoughts, she describes her worries as heaps of moving bugs in her head and she knows what some of them are but not all of them, she also has hullucinations when she is really overwhelmed but we are unsure if these are a coping/justifying method for behaviour or she really does think she sees scarey people. Does anyone have any possible theories as I have looked at all childhood disorders and no one fits. Thank you

[monkeyc]

Ok first thing to do.  

Stop.  Take a deep breath.  Youre not alone and there is help out there.

Most important thing you can do right now for your daughter is to be as calm and in control as you can be for her OK ?

Now as to stopping depression its going to depend on what is causing the depression - triggers are a major thing - the problem is that she may not be able to explain what is causing her to feel depressed.  

if she is BP then Its normal to be brave and ready for anything one week and then depressed the next - for us rapid cyclers it can be hourly when its bad.  

The very best thing you can do is be supportive of her, let the doctors assess here and if at ANY time you think she is a danger to herself or anyone else take her to a hospital right away - a lot of people are hesitant to do that - dont be - as someone who has been there and done that if a hospitalisation means saving a life then its the best thing.

Have faith and hope ok, there will be an answer here, you just need to remember that although the times are hard right now they can get bette.

There's lot of people here who you can talk to, im getting thru my days right now because of some of them.  You are not alone ok.

[hell1971]

Ok now I am really worried

My daughters anxiety has escalated again this week and I am concerned this is going to spiral out of control again and trigger another depression. How can she be brave and ready for anything and then the next week fall to pieces,

How can you stop someone going into depression, I feel helpless to stop it, I dont know what to do.

I have emailed her therapist but am finding that they are not giving any answers yet, they are still assessing, she has had a blood test and nothing came up, she has had a school assesment and they noticed only her habbit of pressing herself on her private parts but nothing else, I have provided video tapes of her irritability and her being overwhelmed but am due to discuss this on tuesday.

I have no clue what is going on...........................any suggestions for a desperate mother.

[monkeyc]

Funnily enough my pdoc and I were discussing this the other day - it used to be almost impossible to find a child under 14 or so who was manifesting BP symptoms but she is now seeing children as young as 8 and 9 who need medication and treatment.

She commented that this is not as rare a it was and alarmingly they are also seeing children as young as 8 or 9 who are going thru puberty and starting to menstruate - as puberty is often the trigger for Bipolar in paediatric cases.

It sounds like something is wrong here, yes BP runs in families - my mother was BP and my 2 brothers both display symptoms, my younger brother is almost exactly like me in his behaviours and moods.

I was an ADHD child with major behavioural issues and spent my childhood in therapy, a lot of this now can be put down to BP but in those days childhood BP (or manic depression as it was known) was considered non existant or very very rare and most child psychs did not consider it - I must have had every diagnosis in the world from autism to aspergers to hyperactivity and finaly ADHD - Ritalin did work for me in a lot of ways and a lot of the behaviour stabilised in the end with good therapists.

BP in children this young can and does happen and many of the things people are describing here are things I did and I am sure if we all think back we can see similar behaviours in all of our shildhoods - the way BP manifests in childhood is still being studied, the hard thing of course as we all know is that even adults dont react well to all therapies the same way - what works for one person does not always work for the other do its obviously harder in kids.

[hell1971]

I have just been to the docs and we have given them some videos of some of the behaviours, they dont think the wetting is anxiety so they have decided to check her for diabetes, this was a massive traumer because I had to take her for a blood test, she was terrible, she ran out of the docs twice and then when we had to go to get the blood test done she ran out of the building and kept running across driveways, she was fast approaching a road and I couldnt catch her so I screamed at her and this stopped her in her tracks, she then realised she was by the road it was so scary, they had to hold her down to get the blood out is was really stressfull for both of us. I guess if we have to go through this to get her the help she needs then we will just have to but in the mean time Im scared she is going to hurt herself. She got really upset last night and thinks that she is never going to get rid of her worries in her head, she has started to say she doesnt want to go to places again and that she sometimes feels like she wants to die, the other day she was frustrated and said she wanted to strangle herself, so I know the depression is coming again, we had a long chat and she has said she will go to her friends on saturday but I think she will probably bail.  

[jeternut]

My son has done that many times wet himself. The doctor says that it is that he is so upset and anxious that he doesn't notice doing it. He now actually has a problem with having bowel movements in his pants.

The only thing that I can suggest when she does that is to make her have a time out which usually never really worked for me. I learned that basically when she throws the remote don't scream at her just tell her we don't throw things in this house and then when she has calmed down make her pick it up. Most likely the wetting herself is her way of trying to get attention, she probably does not like the way she feels inside herself. I am not sure if you have read this or not but the book "The Bipolar Child" is a great book to read.
If I can help in any way feel free to contact me. I do know what you are going through and it is very difficult. Before my son was in the hospital I had delt with the situations so long and no one really believing me that it was that bad (the school, his friends, my husband) that I ended up haveing a break down. my email address is ***@****.

[hell1971]

Thank you for this, I am so worried she has wet herself 7 times in the last week and she says she cant feel it, she is on a high at the moment and I find this the most dificult to manage. She is so unpredictable, she has only really hurt herself, she threatens to hurt others but doesnt, this morning she said she wanted to break the tv all because she was too agitated to get up and get the remote so throwing the remote hard on the floor was her answer, 10mins later she wet herself whilst laughing exessively.

I just want to know so that we can start a plan of action to make things better for everyone.