Also know that you can have some symptoms of bipolar but not be diagnosed until later in life. I am pretty sure I heard voices as a teenager and I definitely remember being depressed and calling for help but getting nowhere around age 20. I'm 36 now and was diagnosed bipolar I only 2 years ago. That's a big stretch of time. Of course, it was only 2 years ago that my symptoms got really bad. I had been diagnosed with depression since at least 1997, and also in 2001 I had some "horror movie hallucinations"- visions of people being maimed graphically, including my kids which were not in my control- which is part of bipolar and STILL wasn't diagnosed!

A good book you can see if its at your library, the psych. dr's office library, or maybe a bookstore- its called "The Bipolar Handbook" by Wes Burgess, M.D., Ph.D. and is in a question and answer format. I started reading it at the bookstore right after I was diagnosed and bought it- nearly everything I read I could relate to! It was uncanny.