Children of Parents With Bipolar Disorder at Risk of ADHD and Early Onset Bipolar, Study Suggests

Children who have a parent with bipolar disorder are more likely to develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) during their preschool years than children with no family history of bipolar disorder, reports astudy inJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The study also found that these children were more likely to develop symptoms of bipolar disorder as they grew older.“[Bipolar disorder] symptoms were scarce during the preschool years and increased throughout [early adolescence],” wrote Boris Birmaher, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and colleagues. “Developing early interventions to delay or, ideally, prevent [bipolar disorder] ons et are warranted.”Birmaher and colleagues recruited 116 children who had a parent with either bipolar I or II disorder (BD-I/II parents), 53 children of parents with a non-bipolar psychiatric disorder (non-BD parents), and 45 children of parents with no psychiatric disorder (healthy parents) for the study. All children were between the ages of 2 and 5 years at the start of the study and were periodically assessed for about 10 years using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children, Present and Lifetime Version (KSADS-PL).The researchers found that the children of BD-I/II parents were significantly more likely to have ADHD by age 5 (21.6% of children) than children of non-BD parents (3.8%) and children of healthy parents (2.2%). After age 5...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ADHD anxiety BD-NOS bipolar disorder children early onset Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent parents Source Type: research