Warning Signs Bipolar illness looks different in children than it does in adults, warns CABF, the Childhood and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation.
Children usually have an ongoing, continuous mood disturbance that is a mix of mania and depression.
This rapid and severe cycling between moods produces chronic irritability and few clear periods of wellness between episodes. Symptoms of bipolar disorder can emerge as early as infancy. Mothers often report that children later diagnosed with the disorder were extremely difficult to settle and slept erratically. They seemed extraordinarily clingy, and from a very young age often had uncontrollable, seizure-like tantrums or rages out of proportion to any event. In adolescents , bipolar disorder may resemble the following classical adult presentation of the illness.