When did bipolar show in you?

Not in a severe way until after my daughter was born, five years ago. I was 29.

But I was diagnosed when I was 24, so I had symptoms prior. Just not this bad.

I have had issues with my mental health for as long as I can remember. I used to get myself into states where I'd completely zone out and draw help me on the walls, I even ran out of my house and sat in the park for hours, but it felt like minutes. My parents were so worried as I was only 11. I used to hallucinate, I would hear voices telling me I was fat but I thought it was other kids saying it behind my back. I only realised it wasn't many years later. I then had a big psychotic break at age 14 where I refused to leave my house for two years, missed school and lost friends. I was extremely depressed and delusional. I didn't get diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder until my late teens, where I was very manic for the first time ever. Very depressed too. I have been switched between bipolar and schizoaffective disorder a few times.

Why weren't you diagnosed at age 14?

My psychiatrist didn't like to diagnose "children" so he kept me undiagnosed and just tried to treat the symptoms. I had to keep seeing him until I was legally an adult,unfortunately.

I recall having my first depressive episode when I was around 9 years old. I remember I was so confused as to what was happening since nothing was going on in my life that was particularly bad. I cried for weeks and stayed by myself. I never got help for it.

I see patterns of possible hypomania as a child where I went through periods of time where I was super active, creative, etc, but it's hard for me to determine if maybe that was my personality. True hypomania did set in at age 15 though where I did not feel like myself at all. It felt so strange, yet so good from the euphoria and feeling grandiose, but I did a lot of impulsive things during that time, which was out of character for me. Hypomania definitely turned into mania at this point.

That's also when I had my first mixed manic episode following the euphoria (one of the worst, scariest episodes ever, had to go through delusions and paranoia, and went unmedicated since my parents were completely against it, although the school was pushing for it to happen), and then I was depressed for months afterwards before cycling into hypomania again. I was first treated with medication around age 19-20, but it took a while to get proper treatment and results.

On Christmas Day when I was 11 years old, a voice in my head told me over and over to kill myself. I didn't even really understand what it meant, just that it was ruining my happiness. I knew I couldn't tell my mother, so I kept quiet. I then went through some major depression as a teen. I wrote suicide notes and cut myself. When my family found out I self-injured, they laughed and mocked me.

My periods of uncontrollable rage at age 17 made my boyfriend encourage me to see a doctor. I tried an anti-depressant, which induced rapid cycling. From there I was given a questionnaire and a "diagnosis" of a mood disorder. I was prescribed Seroquel, which I stopped taking because the dose was too high and causing bad side effects. At age 18 I was experiencing symptoms of paranoia but I didn't tell my counselor. I didn't even realize I was having symptoms until years later. I was in counseling for depression when I experienced a mixed episode. I saw the pdoc on campus and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

I started dealing with MI when I was in college. First diagnosed as GAD, then MD later in my 20's, and BP at 30.

The pdocs and myself think bp started for me when I had my son at 21. But didn't get medicated for it until I was 36 and had a psychotic break. But I had been dx with depression and pmdd. Drs throughout my life would tell me they thought I had bp, but I just didn't believe it.p

my parents put in me therapy when I was only 6, I had wild temper tantrums well before that. depression started around 12-13. and I first heard a professional (my therapist, and my first psychiatrist) call it bipolar disorder at 14. at the time it was BP II or NOS. things got significantly worse when I was 25 when I had my 2nd mixed episode (I didn't know that's what my 1st one was) and had psychotic symptoms along with more symptoms of mania that I had ever had before in the past. Now the dx is BP I with psychotic symptoms... wonderful right. never even knew what it was like to be "normal" before I lost my mind.

I had a month long stay in the hospital for severe depression when I was 30. I bounced all over the map after that for decades. I finally got diagnosed as bipolar a few years ago when I was in my late 50s.

sorry to hear that it took so long to get the proper diagnosis... that's a long time of living in hell and not knowing what's going on.

I was officially diagnosed in 2012, but looking back I think I've been bipolar for much, if not all, of my life. I had night terrors as a child, along with distinct periods of agitation and depression. My first serious depressive episode occurred when I was only 10, a second at 13. I also had times of what I believe was mania, which only got worse with age.

About a dozen years ago I picked up Jane Pauley's book Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue, about living with BP. As I was perusing it, my sister---who was also looking at a copy---said, "I think you have that". I couldn't deny it, but since all I knew about the disease was that you had to take lithium for it (and I did know about all the complications it can carry) and I didn't want that, I put the idea away. All I had at the time was a diagnosis of depression, and I didn't see any reason to pursue a different diagnosis.

But bipolar has a way of chasing you down, and the episodes (which I only now recognize as such) got worse and worse until my internist demanded I undergo a psych consult. I reluctantly allowed it, and the rest, as they say, is history.