Welcome D. - You have to remember that diagnoses, especially psychiatric diagnoses are just guess, derived from combining a number of observed behaviors and fitting them into a preselected category. In North America the preselected categories are published in a guidebook called DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, version 4). The diagnosis relies heavily upon the psychiatrist's clinical experience, as well.

So, what I am trying to say is, just because your daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it doesn't necessarily mean that she has the classic Bipolar I type, especially since there is no family history of the disorder. The neurochemical breakdown (which essentially is what any mental disorder can be defined as) that is affecting your daughter manifest as symptoms that are similar to bipolar disorder, but the etiology (cause, or location of the neuronal electrical signal breakdown) is different. In other words, different nerve signaling problems can produce similar symptoms.

We do know that bipolar disorder is not a purely genetic disorder. Researchers have proposed other causes, such as birth trauma, viral or bacterial infections, head trauma, nutritional deficiencies, and a number of other potential causes. No one really knows what causes the disorder.

I am almost certain that the genetics of bipolar disorder is not like ALS, which is (I believe) an autosomal recessive genetic disorder. That may not be totally true; perhaps some sub-types of bipolar disorder are due to recessive genes, but I have not seen any literature confirming this.

It is really difficult (if not presently impossible) to determine if the disorder would be passed on by your daughter. The current state of scientific knowledge is still unable to predict anything like this.

I hope that this is of some help. - Cam

<font color=blue>"The minute you or anybody else knows what you are you are not it, you are what you or anybody else knows you are and as everything in living is made up of finding out what you are it is extraordinarily difficult really not to know what you are and yet to be that thing." - Gertrude Stein, 1937</font color=blue>