Bipolar and ADD/ADHD

How many people here are diagnosed with both BP and either ADD or ADHD? It seems like the two often go hand in hand. I wonder sometimes if I don't have ADD.

I think the symptoms can overlap. I thought I was ADHD at one time.

I wonder the same thing. It seems like if I could just get it all together I could accomplish so much. I was diagnosed ADD before I was diagnosed bipolar many years ago as well.

I haven't been diagnosed by anyone but I have symptoms of both.

I was diagnosed with ADHD but I definitely dont have it. It was a wrong diagnosis, I did all the specific testing, and had seen that pdoc for months regularly and got the diagnosis, was told it was aswell as bipolar, what a crock of bull.

It is far too easy to be diagnosed and I suspect there are many misdiagnosed and overdiagnosed.

An occupational therapist once thought I might have ADHD Inattentive type, and I read about it and I believe I could have it, as I had symptoms all the way from childhood, before bipolar. I got in trouble in 3rd grade - my teacher decided to let the class work at their own pace individually, I guess to teach us discipline, but it totally backfired with me because I just couldn't properly manage my time without a teacher's influence (what 8 year old can?) and for however long she ran this experiment, I would skip off to the bathroom every time and spend the whole period making sculptures out of paper towel and water. It's not that the math was hard, when the teacher found out I wasn't doing any work, I had to catch up outside class time, and I did. I don't know why it was so hard to pay attention and stay on task in class, or why it was more interesting to hide in the bathroom by myself and pretend I was putting my arm in a cast, but that's just one instance. Teachers were frequently sending notes home saying I couldn't "stay on task" all the way through to grade 8. They tested me in grade 2 or 3, I don't know what the tests were, but I was labelled "gifted" and put in special enrichment classes where we did stuff like build bridges out of popsicle sticks and see whose bridge could hold the most weight. That was fun. And logic puzzles. I love logic puzzles.

The problem with diagnosis now is, what's the bipolar, what's a med side effect, and what was there to begin with? I'm not going to pursue an ADHD diagnosis, because I don't want to take a stimulant - I have a hard enough time staying stable. Schoolwork is still difficult, but I'll manage.

Comorbidity is quite common in people with BP (not necessarily for ADHD, but other psychiatric disorders too). I don't have stats handy. Still, as another poster mentioned, BP and ADHD symptoms can overlap.

I was diagnosed with mild ADHD first, and then BP2. Not being treated for the ADHD, as BP is the more serious concern. It's possible that many people with BP2 are misdiagnosed with ADHD because of some shared symptoms (also, depression is common in people with ADHD).

Sometimes I doubt my ADHD diagnosis, although it's not something that I think about often. My aim right now is to make my BP as manageable as possible.

I wonder what I had/have. Starting in 1st grade it was like most things were as if the teacher was the one from the Peanuts Cartoons. Every so often I was right there and heard each word, wrote it memory and was "into it." Then as I got older it got much worse with school. But once I started working it was not an issue (most of the time). I didn't feel distracted so much as uncaring to the discussions and topics. If it was science or english class I had no problems and did very well but history, math and music were horrible for me. In high school it was all downhill as I was being chewed out always for the math and history stuff the rest of my grades suffered as I came to feel hopeless and sort of dumb. My secret was that all night I was reading but they were not class books they were College level sciences, history of electronics and computers and military books. Which is funny because now both robotics and computers are taught in school .

I was diagnosed as ADHD as a child -- severe ADHD. Then recently in meeting with my T and pdoc, they told me to forget about ADHD and said BPII...I am still trying to reason that out, as ADHD was so much a part of my life...impacted me my entire life -- trying so hard to be 'normal' while along, it appears, I was never really ADHD.

Confused!!!!

I have both inattentive ADD and Bipolar II. There's no doubt the ADD diagnosis is correct because I have it pretty severely, as well as getting calmer when I'm on stimulants instead of "stimulated".

I have a diagnosis of both.

I had recently found this on the internet:
"A child, adolescent, or adult with predominately AD/HD symptoms noted above with Bipolar Disorder features will present with mood instability, mood swings, mood shifts, intensivity, driven emotionality, etc. This category sees overlapping of both disorders. They often manifest manipulative, demanding behaviors with invincibility [no fear of consequences] and impulsivity. Because Bipolars often have their own agendas (self-centered) they are driven to achieve what it is that they want even in an impulsive manner. They also are selective in their focus, i.e., can attend to what interests them but cannot follow what doesn't, which is a part of the AD/HD. "

This sounds like my own personal history.

I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar I and ADHD. I often wonder if the ADHD symptoms are really just part of the Bi-Polar mania and not really ADHD at all.

Regardless, I am taking Adderall for the ADHD and it seems to be helping those symptoms.