Is It Bipolar Disorder or Asperger Syndrome?

A recent e-mail from a parent seeking help for her child who has Bipolar Disorder has prompted this article, as a few years ago I had wondered if my son had Bipolar Disorder. He certainly had mood swings that were unexplainable. One day he would be happy as a clam, inventing a video game on paper, drawing all the characters and levels all day long, talking a mile a minute about the story line and how the game was to be played. He would go through tons of paper and work until the game was finished without stopping to eat unless reminded. The next day, or a few days later, he would be utterly miserable, nothing in his life was going well and he cried over everything.

There seemed to be no apparant reason for these mood swings. In fact, these mood swings could occur several times a day. One moment he would be overly happy and the next moment he would be suicidal. This behavior led us to believe that he either had bipolar disorder or depression.

He was four years old when I took him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him as emotionally labile. I then embarked upon some detective work to try to find a reason for this up and down mood behavior. A rotation diet didn't produce any particular offending food item that caused my son's unhappiness. Cutting out sugar and avoiding the items that my son was allergic to didn't stop the mood swings.

When my son was 7, I again consulted the psychiatrist who stated that it was possible that his behavior was caused by all the asthma drugs he was taking. One of the side effects of two of the drugs is depression, so I tried to cut down on those to see if it made a difference to his overall mood. Unfortunately, it didn't make a difference. We went back to the psychiatrist again when my son was 9, this time with a question about bipolar disorder only to be told that our son was suffering from depression brought on by anxiety. At this point in time, the psychiatrist offered Prozac to relieve the unhappiness my son was suffering from. We declined drug treatment due to the fact that whenever we give our son a drug, he seems to over react to it.

Long before we received a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome, I researched bipolar disorder because some of the criteria seemed to fit my son. Bipolar disorder can be difficult to diagnose in children and it can be quite a complex disorder with different variations for each individual.

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