Hi chimera! Welcome to PC! Yes, you can be diagnosed later in life. Most bipolar symptoms are noticed at about age 20 I believe that I read somewhere. Don't trust this memory though.

I don't know if we can use me as an example, but I finally got DX'd at 43, but I know that I been born this way. Yes you must stay with a pdoc for awhile because you can't really walk in a pdoc office and get a diagnosis then and there. But he might just start prescribing meds to treat your symptoms. He may treat you like your bipolar with the same meds, but the paper work won't say bipolar till he's convinced. Who cares what the paper says as long you are getting treated! It's all mental illness and they just treat the symptoms, because there is no cure to mental illness. I could careless if they called me crazy as long as they gave me my meds.