BipolarCentral
Your One Stop Source For Information On Bipolar Disorder

Loved One With Bipolar Disorder?
Discover How to Cope and Deal with
Your loved One's Bipolar Disorder

Do You Have Bipolar Disorder?
Learn the Secrets to Cope and Deal
With Your Bipolar Disorder

Child With Bipolar Disorder?
Learn How to REALLY Help
And Support Your Child

Dating Someone With Bipolar?
Secrets to a Successful
Relationship Revealed

Marrying Someone With Bipolar?
Learn How to Support Your Spouse
and Avoid Common Mistakes

Need Money Because of Bipolar Disorder?
Learn How to Be Successful Even if
You are Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

Drug Addiction and Bipolar Disorder
Secrets to Beating Drug Addiction
When Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

Need Affordable Health Insurance?
Information You Can't Live Without
If You are Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

In Debt Because of Bipolar Disorder?
Get out of debt fast!

Improve Your Emotional Health
Reduce Your Stress Levels and
Increase Your Brain Power

Parents’ Role in Child’s Treatment of Bipolar Disorder

By Michele Soloway Sexton

Even children without Bipolar Disorder often have moments when they have a hard time controlling their impulses, difficulty staying still, or dealing with frustration. Many times this is (mis)diagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

However, for a child to receive a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) still requires that the child must meet the adult criteria for the disorder. In other words, there still are no separate criteria for diagnosing children, which makes it difficult to get your child diagnosed with the disorder.

If your child has certain behaviors, however, a red flag should be raised:

• If they try to jump out of a moving car, for example
• If they exhibit destructive rages which continue past 4 years old
• If they talk of wanting to die or to kill themselves

Once your child is, in fact, diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (Early-Onset Bipolar Disorder), you as the parent face a role in their treatment.

Your child should have a treatment team consisting of a doctor, psychiatrist, and therapist, as well as other medical professionals, and you will be called upon to work closely with them.

By having the whole family involved in the child's treatment, the frequency, severity, and duration of the child’s episodes can usually be reduced. The child’s ability to function successfully in the community, in school, and at home can usually be improved as well.

For your role to be the most successful, you need to be knowledgeable about the disorder. Learn all you can about it, first of all. Join support groups, and get together with other parents. Other resources are available online, such as: Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF) at www.cabf.com, and www.bipolarcentral.com.

You may be able to prevent episodes in your child by being aware of their triggers and their symptoms, and by prompt and early intervention. By having such knowledge, and by effective treatment (medication and therapy), you can be an integral part in stabilizing their extreme mood swings and help to restore them to a normal mood.

Parents of children with Bipolar Disorder have discovered numerous techniques that the CABF refers to as therapeutic parenting, and these techniques have helped to calm their children when they are showing symptoms of an episode. These techniques can also help to prevent and even help to reduce the amount of relapses.

These techniques include:

• practicing and teaching their child relaxation techniques
• using firm restraint holds to contain rages
• prioritizing battles and letting go of less important matters
• reducing stress in the home, including learning and using good listening and communication skills
• using music and sound, lighting, water, and massage to assist the child with waking, falling asleep, and relaxation
• becoming an advocate for stress reduction and other accommodations at school
• helping the child anticipate and avoid, or prepare for stressful situations by developing coping strategies beforehand
• engaging the child's creativity through activities that express and channel their gifts and strengths
• providing routine structure and a great deal of freedom within limits
• removing objects from the home (or locking them in a safe place) that could be used to harm self or others during a rage, especially guns; keeping medications in a locked cabinet or box.

About the Author

Michele Soloway has dealt with bipolar disorder from a very young age. Her grandmother, mother, herself, and her teenage son all have the disorder. She also lost her sister to suicide because of bipolar disorder. Michele has a blog for bipolar survivors at http://bipolarsurvivor.blogspot.com, and is also a contributing writer to www.bipolarcentral.com.

Back to Article List

This Week's Bipolar News

'Bipolar Boy' tops awareness week
The Patriot-News - PennLive.com
A program by a comedian with bipolar disorder headlines the Mental Health Association of Lebanon County's observance of Mental Illness Awareness Week. ...

Treatment of Bipolar Illness: A Casebook for Clinicians and Patients
Am J Psychiatry (subscription)
Part III, "Pharmacology and Neurobiology of Bipolar Illness," is a review of fundamental issues on psychopharmacology and the causes and mechanisms of the ...

No free assessment for fraudster
Independent Online
A Western Cape fraudster failed on Wednesday to have himself sent to a State psychiatric hospital for free assessment for a bipolar mood disorder. ...

Click here for all Bipolar News.

Featured Article:

Supporter - Don't Let Yesterday or Tomorrow Ruin Today

I want to start by asking you a question:

Does yesterday help with today when you're dealing with bipolar disorder?

Another question:

Does tomorrow help with today when you're dealing with bipolar disorder?

NO. To both questions.

Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow isn't here yet. The only day you have is today, and the only thing that's important is what you do with it.

Click here to read the entire aritcle

Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

Copyright 2004-2008, BipolarCentral.com