Saturday, January 29, 2011

ADHD v Bipolar Diagnosis in Kids

Diagnosis of, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder cases being diagnosed increase as treatments and knowledge improve. Some parents still overlook typical symptoms, especially in ADHD cases.

Everything, as we know, exists on a spectrum. You can have too much diagnosis or not enough.

Lately, since we're looking, certain warning signs have been released by the Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to help parents detect ADHD symptoms early and to assist in providing treatment options before potential mental disorders become overbearing.

The symptoms include inability to pay attention, inability to sleep, lack of attention to detail, quickly or easily distracted, trouble completing simple tasks or assignments, talkative, and showing difficulty in playing quietly.

Other factors that may influence a child’s attitude and behavior include stress from family or school issues, or recent drastic lifestyle changes.


Here's what a bad mom would do: ignore the symptoms.

Here's what a bad parent would do, give the kid pills for ADHD.

Symptoms don't lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. Hyper kids may be cracked out on sugar, additives, MSG, etc. Try things like a GOOD DIET before labeling ADHD.

I wonder how much diet has to do with crazy kids. Or maybe it's teaching style! :P

Friday, January 14, 2011

Depression Apps

Anybody use any apps to health their coping/recovery? Curious to know what's out there, but also what your'e doing.....

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Faith and Recovery for Bipolar

A number of bi-polar bloggers in the blogosphere have a very deep faith. Most for good, although the odd one has found more trouble than good with his/her faith journey.

I think that fundamentally the recovery, coping, living, is based on a support network. Sure, that sounds pretty self-explanatory and obvious, but here's my question: what about atheists?

I can't really speak for an atheist with bi-polar, and I could never put my shoes in that frame of mind (unless we had a parallel universe :P), but I want to know for atheists how do you cope?

Let me frame that question a bit better so it deosn't seem so patronizing.

Do you find adequate support networks? How do you balance questions (if you ever have them) that involve non-belief in a 'higher being' or a 'greater purpose'?

Does that make sense? Any thoughts?