Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are the first to use brain imaging to examine the effects of emotion on working memory function in children with pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). PBD and ADHD are very severe developmental disorders that share behavioral characteristics such as impulsivity, irritability, and attention problems. The study ...

A new study from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet suggests that bipolar disorder – or manic-depressive disorder – does not increase the risk of committing violent crime. Instead, the over-representation of individuals with bipolar disorder in violent crime statistics is almost entirely attributable to concurrent substance abuse. ...

Nearly half of patients hospitalized with bipolar disorder may suffer from hypertension, and the younger a person is diagnosed with the psychiatric condition the more likely they are to develop high blood pressure, according to a recent Michigan State University study. The study, led by MSU psychiatrist Dale D'Mello, analyzed 99 patients hospitalized for bipolar disorder, a condition sometimes called manic- ...

A study from Rhode Island Hospital finds patients who were "over-diagnosed" with bipolar disorder were more likely to have received disability payments and for a longer period of time. The researchers propose a link between these unconfirmed cases of bipolar disorder and the receipt of the payments. Their study and findings are published in the June 2010 edition of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. ...

Shifting children from the controversial diagnosis of bipolar disorder to one that more accurately reflects their symptoms will not by itself decrease the rate of psychopharmacologic treatment and is not enough to help troubled children flourish, according to a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine by researchers at The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and a physician-researcher ...

A series of imaging studies are revealing that the brain works differently in youth with bipolar disorder (BD) than in chronically irritable children who are often diagnosed with pediatric BD. "This suggests that chronically irritable children may suffer from a syndrome distinct from BD and may require different treatments," said Ellen Leibenluft, M.D., chief of NIMH's Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders, ...

Offspring of two parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder appear more likely to develop the same illness or another psychiatric condition than those with only one parent with psychiatric illness, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The offspring of two parents with psychiatric illness represent an extremely high-risk group, acc ...

Troubled children diagnosed with bipolar disorder may fare better with a different diagnosis, according to researchers at The Hastings Center. The researchers support an emerging approach, which gives many of those children a new diagnosis called Severe Mood Dysregulation (SMD) or Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria (TDD). ...

Researchers, for the first time, have pinpointed a genetic hotspot that confers risk for both bipolar disorder and depression. People with either of these mood disorders were significantly more likely to have risk versions of genes at this site than healthy controls. One of the genes, which codes for part of a cell's machinery that tells genes when to turn on and off, was also found to be over-expressed in ...

Children and teens who are diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder often face significant life style adjustments not only for themselves, but for family and friends around them. Medication management, psychological treatments, and other behavioral modifications can be intimidating, frustrating, and difficult to adapt too. The National Institute of Health (NIH) recently released a free evidence based e-book called, ...