ADHD vs. Bipolar Disorder

By Eileen Bailey, Health Guide Monday, April 04, 2011

- A
- A
- A

Diagnosing ADHD is never an easy task. There are no laboratory tests, no x-rays, no way for a doctor to look at your brain and say you have ADHD. Instead, it is diagnosed based on a list of behavioral symptoms, such as hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Making it even harder to diagnose is the presence...

Read the rest of this post >>

Benzodiazepines

Hide Comments | Add comment

Merely Me, Health Guide

4/ 6/11 2:59pm

Hi Eileen

I am going to give this link over on the depression site as there are many members who wonder about the differences between these two diagnoses. I have a friend who has a son who was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in his late teens. He had originally be diagnosed with ADHD but she always felt like...it didn't really fit. So this article is of great interest to me to note the similarities and differences.

I hope our members chime in with their experiences on this topic.

Eileen Bailey, Health Guide

4/ 7/11 7:02pm

Merely Me

Thanks for your comments and I do want to remind our readers that for more information on bipolar disorder they can visit our site BipolarConnect for a lot of great information on this very confusing illness.

Eileen

John McManamy, Health Guide

4/ 9/11 4:57am

John McManamy from BipolarConnect, here. Many thanks for the comparing the two illnesses. I've observed no end of comorbitities when I was facilitating a DBSA support group. One condition often masks the other, and vice-versa. I also think one illness may kickstart or worsen the other. For instance, I'm a strong advocate of the practice of mindfulness to control moodswings. But ADHD is going to sabotage any mindfulness practice. Next thing, the bipolar has taken you by surprise. Another way of saying this is it's possible in many instances for the cortical regions of the brain to modulate the mood surges and outages coming from the limbic regions. But if the signaling in the cortical regions are also impaired the is no grey matter standing in the way of raw emotion and behavior. Bad things are sure to happen.

I'm sure it works the other way around, too. The emotional surges overwhelm the thinking parts of the brain. If you were easily distracted before, then it's going to be a lot worse and more intense.

I think this needs to be studied a lot more. Unfortunately, we have bipolar experts and ADHD experts who hardly talk to each other. I am friends with Gina Pera, author of "Is It You, Me, or Ault ADD?" The one expert familiar to both of us is Joseph Biederman of Harvard, who has done extensive research in both illnesses thanks to his clinical experience in treating kids. It was Dr Biederman who first noticed that the ADHD diagnosis didn't explain a lot of the behavior of a lot of the kids he was seeing. No one believed him at first when he said the behavior in these kids more resembled bipolar. One of his distinguishing characteristics was grandiosity. He gave the example of a kid tearing up the back yard to grow veggies to feed all the starving people of the world.

We need a lot more Biedermans. Your post is also a wake-up call to me to do posts on this topic. And I hope you will continue to write more on this. As well as the doctors, we bloggers need to be talking to each other, as well. Again, many many thanks for starting this very important conversation.