[Sometimes psychotic]

I'm wondering about early signs of your bipolar as a teen. I was recently diagnosed as bipolar I with psychotic features or schizoaffective bipolar type (they don't know for sure yet). My primary complaint is psychosis more than moods though. I was just wondering with things like schizophrenia there is often social withdrawal as a teen which I experienced. Are there similar occurrences with bipolar?

I started experiencing bipolar symptoms when I was 11.

I definitely had social withdrawal. In fact, I lost all my friends and became a loner. My mood was just unstable, which made all my relationships with people unstable. So yes, I would say there are similar occurrences with bipolar!

Edit: I wasn't diagnosed as bipolar until I was 24, so I never actually took any medication until now

[Nammu]

BP here. No loner here.

[Icare dixit]

Love that question!

I think about a one-third of those with BP, about 50%–100% of those with SZA/BP and likewise 50%-100%, but probably far more towards the 100%, have had quite serious prodromes all their lives. Why I think that is largely explained in a recent thread about Memory (I gave similar explanations and my own story in other threads).

I had definitely prodromes all my life, which can be summed up as bad/inaccurate memory and (consequently, I posit) bad/inaccurate perception.

Some (if not all) of those prodromes are symptoms of dyslexia (not strictly speaking all prodromes, but loosely interpreted, that itself being a prodromes). Dyscalculia is very similar. I call the syndrome of psychotic disorder prodromes dysreductia (assuming a reduced memory capacity).

At a very young age and through my first depression that started at age 11, I made no sense at all: my mind was disorganised/disordered. Just before the depression I developed a personality and its development was cut short by the depression, which can be described as a psychotic borderline personality (BPD). During that depression I developed mild hallucinations. After the depression I was able to communicate far more effectively and treated my firm beliefs as jokes, to be made fun of. Mania/psychosis hit for the first time some years later.

I sometimes do joke about my beliefs to this day, but generally I only talk to my insane friends and they have rather wild ideas themselves and can relate, respect and accept. My psychiatrist is the only very sane person and really sees me as completely mental. I see that as a compliment: I resist destruction/disintegration of my self/soul.

But I am not your typical example, even just because I have been diagnosed with SZA/BP, or schizomania, not BP.

[Icare dixit]

Basically: part of me can be described as hebephrenic (so young schizophrenic/psychotic, now called disorganised schizophrenia, social withdrawal (relatively speaking: I was very outgoing before that time) and mental incapacitation first), but severe and continuous mania and post-mania depression later.

[Sometimes psychotic]

Thanks you guys. It just seems they do far less research on bipolar and sza than they do on schizophrenia so I'm curious about these sorts of comparisons.

[cashart10]

I had an early onset. It presented as mdd at 14 but by the time I was 15 I was mildly psychotic and my moods were laible. I rapid cycled when I was younger but my cycles were much like today: shorter manias and long, crippling depressions. I'm 32 now and have had miserable, sometimes insane and almost always volatile moods, since I was almost 29. I was fairly stable prior to then for close to 8 years. I was diagnosed with bd at 15.

[Crazy Hitch]

Yes I can definitely trace some hypomanic episodes back to my teens. Lack of sleep, hyper sexuality, more outgoing etc were some of the symptoms for me when I was going through episodes.

[Ocean Swimmer]

I had friends but suffered a lot as a young person.
1st hospital at 19.

[1278]

I actually started having suicidal ideation at age 5 to 6, so my symptoms started quite early. I thought it was MDD because I suffered from severe depression almost my entire life but I also had some anger issues starting from age 12.

[RomanJames2014]

Looking back, I showed signs of bipolar when I was 9 or 10 but no one ever thought anything of it. Fast forward to 25 when I found out I had bipolar, learning more and more about bipolar shows me how much it was appearantly as a kid.

Sometimes I feel mad/sad that no one ever thought about taking me to therapy or anything until I was 17 (diagnosed with depression and GAD).

But yeah. I have always viewed my life in "good" times and "bad" times and now I can say that I was manic or depressed during precise times of my life.

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[jules77]

i had early-onset. two of my (best) psychiatrists said that understands early onset bipolar to likely cause rapid cycling bipolar, aka many people diagnosed young actually are rapid cycling. i had 6 hospitalizations before 20, and 2 of those were for severe mixed episodes, hence the BP diagnosis @ 16...though medically speaking, i was not old enough to be "diagnosed". regardless, i've been treated for BP1 rapid cycling since then. i feel as though i lost much of my adolescence to this illness, but i suppose that was simply its course at the time.

[gina_re]

I don't know about early onset because I never went to a pdoc at that time, but I was moody as hell!! Mostly dysphoria and depression issues as I look back.

[Shut up and Talk]

It's common for many MH issues to arise in- and be missed in -pubescent teens. I'm 32 and they're finally catching on that I have more than your garden variety depression / anxiety. I've been symptomatic since I was 10