How do I know if my teen is bipolar?
Teenagers are notorious for their mood swings -- but how do you know when they indicate a more serious problem? Watch Ask the Experts Ellen Leibenluft, MD, of the National Institute of Mental Health, explains telltale signs to watch for.
Transcript
So someone might begin to say, hm, is this mood swing just kind of what we see in teenagers
or is this really something I should worry about? [MUSIC PLAYING]
There's two sorts of things that we look at. One is-- or that a parent can begin to think about.
One is the extent to that whether this is more than one would expect. Now of course, it's a little tricky.
But we know particularly, say teenagers, they might have some mood swings. And so someone might begin to say,
hm, is this mood swing just kind of what we see in teenagers or is this really something I should worry about?
The second thing to say is that it's important to look at what we call impairment, which means
is something going wrong in the child's life because of it? Is the child having more difficulty in school?
Is the child isolated from his or her friends when he or she used to have kind of a normal social life?
And then the third thing to say is that you can always seek a consultation from a mental health professional, someone
who is trained in child psychiatry or psychology. You can do that. And you can just frame it like, I'm not sure whether there's
something wrong or not. [AUDIO LOGO]
bipolar disorder
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