This also brings forth the serious question of mandatory grade promotion. Inpatient staff must ask themselves if parents are making 'informed' decisions regarding educational and health concerns for their children. Parents must know, however hard it may be, the full extent of current and future impairment given what is know about the student's course of illness and history. This is neither the time to 'understate' the case nor to protect the student and the family from the expectation that relapse is not only likely but highly probable. The goal is to frankly communicate the serious nature of the disorder while ensuring that some optimism may be maintained.
Contingency planning helps reduce the anxiety of impending relapse.
The most important goal for an educator of a bipolar student is to keep that student interested in learning and feeling welcome at school. This is even more important that teaching a prescribed number of concepts by June or in a manner that does not appear to 'bend the rules' too much for a particular child. If the primary measure of success in educating these students is how well they have been molded into the routine and rules of the school, then it is likely that the student's best interests have come second. This illness will go on far longer than the years spent in school. Remember that the student did not choose to have bipolar disorder any more than a child chooses to have Down's syndrome or profound deafness.