Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness, experienced by both males and females, that involves a particular set of symptoms. The nature of the symptoms of schizophrenia is wide-ranging, involving positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and symptoms involving cognitive and neurological deficits. Symptoms also involve general mental health-related features.

Professionals often conceptualize schizophrenia as a group of symptoms and features rather than one single illness. Given such wide-ranging features, it’s logical to wonder if schizophrenia symptoms are different for males and females.

To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, someone must fall within the diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Both men and women must exhibit two or more of the following symptoms (note: together, the first four are considered positive symptoms):

• Delusions
• Hallucinations
• Disorganized speech
• Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
• Negative symptoms

At least one symptom must be delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech. Once a man or a woman meets this main criterion, he or she is diagnosed with schizophrenia. He or she may have any number of associated symptoms (Complete List of Schizophrenia Symptoms).

Men and women can be diagnosed with the same serious mental illness we call schizophrenia. Because schizophrenia has so many different symptoms and thus is considered to be a group of disorders, it is a highly individualized disorder. No one experiences schizophrenia the exact same way as someone else.

Even beyond the individual differences, however, schizophrenia can look and feel different for men and women. The schizophrenia symptoms are different in males and females; accordingly, schizophrenia can be a different experience for a man than it is for a woman.

Differences in Symptoms in Men and Women

To receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia, both men and women must have both positive and negative symptoms. Beyond this, the types of symptoms that men and women experience can be quite different.

Men’s symptoms tend to be more severe than women’s. Additionally, schizophrenia symptoms in males are typically characterized in this way:

• Negative symptoms more prominent than positive symptoms
• Cognitive impairments
• Social impairments
• Presence of obsessive-compulsive symptoms
• Disorganization (speech and behavior)

Women often experience schizophrenia differently than do men, and it can look different to observers, too. Schizophrenia symptoms in females often involve:

• Positive symptoms, especially hallucinations and delusions
• Affective (mood) symptoms, including depression
• Anxiety
• Fatigue
• Irritability

How Schizophrenia Symptom Differences Affect Quality of Life

Men and women can experience symptoms of schizophrenia that are quite different from each other. This difference can impact overall quality of life (Living with Schizophrenia: Effects of Schizophrenia). All symptoms of schizophrenia are very disruptive to everyone who lives with the illness. Schizophrenia isn’t easy for men or women. However, because of the differences in symptoms in males and females, the effects on quality of life are different.

Men tend to experience more problems than women. The schizophrenia symptoms in males can cause more maladaptive behavior such as substance abuse with schizophrenia, isolation, and anti-social behavior. They experience more personal troubles like relationship problems, family trouble, unemployment, and homelessness. Perhaps all of these struggles relate to the difficult cognitive problems schizophrenia creates such as lack of motivation and drive, problems with planning, decision-making, and completing tasks.

Women, in contrast, experience a better quality of life despite living with schizophrenia. Women are more likely to marry, have children, and maintain employment. The higher social functioning that women experience allows them to deal with schizophrenia differently.

Why the Difference in Schizophrenia Symptoms in Men and Women?

While researchers continue to study this important question, one thing is known: Males and females have different schizophrenia symptoms and experiences because of differences in the brain. Multiple areas within the brain have been implicated in schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Brain: Impact of Schizophrenia on the Brain).

The areas of damage—including, but not limited to, the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) in the cerebral cortex—that are associated with this mental illness are different in men and women. Schizophrenia damages male brains differently than female brains.

Men and women can have different symptoms of schizophrenia, and those symptoms affect lives uniquely. One isn’t “better” or “worse,” because schizophrenia is a mental illness that is challenging for everyone who lives with it. Also, while there is no cure for schizophrenia, people of both genders can work to minimize symptoms and live a quality life. When someone with schizophrenia is viewed as an individual with symptoms and strengths, the gender differences don’t seem as big.

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The following is a questionnaire on sexual assertiveness as well as tips for preventing date rape. Respond to the questionnaire and then study your answers. Does anything stand out for you? Just how clear are you about what your rights are?

After this questionnaire, there are some suggestions about Date Rape prevention.

People have the right to:

1. Make their own decisions regarding intercourse or other sexual activity regardless of their partner's wishes.
Never Sometimes Always

2. Use or not use birth control regardless of their partner's wishes.
Never Sometimes Always

3. Tell their partner when they want to make love.
Never Sometimes Always

4. Tell their partner they don't want to make love.
Never Sometimes Always

5. Tell their partner they won't have intercourse without birth control.
Never Sometimes Always

6. Tell their partner they want to make love differently.
Never Sometimes Always

7. Masturbate to orgasm.
Never Sometimes Always

8. Tell their partner they are being too rough.
Never Sometimes Always

9. Tell their partner they want to be hugged or cuddled without sex.
Never Sometimes Always

10. Tell their relative they're uncomfortable being hugged or kissed in certain ways.
Never Sometimes Always

11. Ask their partner if they have been examined for S.T.D.'s.
Never Sometimes Always

12. Stop foreplay at any time, including the point of intercourse.
Never Sometimes Always

13. Refuse to have intercourse even though they may have had sex with their partner before and enjoyed it.
Never Sometimes Always

Date Rape Prevention

Date or acquaintance rape means being forced or pressured into having sex by someone you know--against your will, without your consent.

• Know that it could happen to you: studies at colleges indicate that between ten to 25 percent of women report they were raped by men they knew..
• Be assertive in setting boundaries for relationships. Even casual unwanted contact should be firmly discouraged. It is easier to fight off a big attack if you've practiced on smaller intrusions.
• Judge a person by his behavior, not his race, looks, socioeconomic status, or even his relationship to you. Watch out for someone who:
  • gets hostile when you say "no"
  • ignores your wishes, opinions, ideas
  • attempts to make you feel guilty or accuse you of being uptight if you say "no" to sex
  • acts excessively jealous or possessive; keeps tabs on your whereabouts
  • displays destructive anger and aggression

• Define your limits, i.e., how much touch you want with different male friends (handshake, kiss on cheek, kiss on mouth, hug with both arms, intercourse, no touch). Think about this in advance, even though you can change your mind later.
• Defend your limits: "I don't like it when you do that"; "I like you and I don't want to go to bed with you"; "Let's go to the coffeehouse (instead of around the lagoon)." You have the right to be respected, to change your mind, to say "no" or just say, "Because I don't want to." Practice saying "no" clearly --don't hint, don't expect anyone to read your mind.
• Be prepared for his reaction to your defending your limits. Possible reactions include hostility, embarrassment, blaming you for leading him on. You are not responsible for his behavior or his reaction; if he is someone you care about, you may wish to help him through the embarrassment, but you do not need to feel responsible. You have every right to your own decisions.
• Most date rapes involve men and women who conform to traditional, rigid sex roles so it is important to examine sexism in order to prevent rape. Avoid stereotypes such as "anger is unfeminine" that prevent you from expressing yourself.
• Be aware of situations when you do not feel relaxed and in charge. Stereotypes of passivity, coyness, and submissiveness can contribute to a climate for male aggression -- which is his stereotype.
• Communicate clearly! Say "no" when you mean no; "yes" when you mean yes; stay in touch with your feelings to know the difference.
• Believe and act as if you come first, without exploiting others. Treat yourself and others with respect.

By discovering how responsive your bodies are to certain sensations you and your partner can heighten your potential for sexual arousal. Psychosexual therapist Paula Hall describes an exercise to help you do just this.

Preparation

• This exercise should take an hour, so leave yourself enough time.
• Before you start you could prepare your space.
• You'll be naked, so put on the heating an hour before so you'll be warm enough.
• Collect some different textured objects (soft, silky, smooth, warm, cool, etc).

The partner being touched

Lie naked on a bed or wherever is comfortable. If you're brave enough, you can be blindfolded to heighten the experience.

The secret of success is to make sure you're lost in the moment. Allow yourself to feel every sensation to the full by thinking of nothing else. Remember to give feedback to the toucher.

The partner doing the touching

Before you start, you could use an old-fashioned hairpin to find your partner's non-genital erogenous zones. Slowly run the hairpin over their body. Most of the time they'll only feel one point of contact, but on the highly sensitive erogenous zones, they'll feel both.

It's your job to provide a wide range of different stimuli for your partner to experience. Work from head to toe experimenting with a range of different objects and textures.

Try using a silk scarf or a soft blusher brush. Can your partner tell the difference between suede, leather and velvet? How about rubber or a feather? Now try touching with a massage roller or ball.

Experiment with different pressures and different strokes too. Heighten the sensory expectation by making random rather than predictable movements.

Remember to ask what feels good and what feels best.

When you've had enough, swap roles. But be warned - it could be a long night!

Related Information:

• Pleasing Yourself
• Doctors and nurses

After the age of ten we tend to get very serious and shy about our 'private parts', especially women. If you and your partner lack the confidence to look at and touch each other's genitals, sex therapist Paula Hall says it's time for a game of doctors and nurses.

Preparation

• Make sure you're not going to be disturbed.
• Check the room is warm enough and that the lighting is comfortable.
• Have a bath, so you feel fresh and confident.

Be silly

This isn't a sexual encounter - it's show-and-tell for grown-ups. It gives you both the opportunity to ask all the questions you'd never dare ask when making love because it'd be a total passion-killer.

The doctor will see you now...

One partner should be the patient, the other the doctor.

If you're the lucky one whose turn it is to be the doctor, you can now examine to your heart's content.

With appropriate physical gentleness, have a poke and a prod and check out the territory. If you don't want to feel like a gynecologist when looking at your female partner, use a mirror. Just prop it up on a pillow between her open legs and explore the reflection.

Ask any questions you like, such as "Can you feel that?", "What's this for?" and "How far back can it go?"

When you've finished your examination, swap roles.

This is a very silly exercise. But next time you're making love, you'll be surprised how handy those bits of information can be. Knowing how the territory looks helps enormously with orientation.

Related Information:

• I'd like you to ...
• Genital touching for men
• Genital touching for woman

Get to know your body

Learning about what your body likes and how it reacts to different sensations will help you relax in intimate situations and focus on your sexual needs. Find out more from psychosexual therapist Paula Hall .

Preparation

Allow at least 30 minutes for this exercise. Switch off the phone, lock your door and make sure you won't be disturbed

Many people ignore the sensual pleasures of their body, preferring to focus on genital stimulation. But doing this cuts you off from so much potential intimacy and pleasure and can often lead to goal-orientated sex that may be disappointing.

Bath time

Run yourself a bath, making it deep and warm. (If you don't have a bath, a shower will do.) Add a favorite bath foam or oil, step in and relax.

Focus on the warmth of the water. Do you feel it differently on various parts of your body? How does the water feel as it moves over you? Notice the varying textures of your skin and the areas that are most sensitive to touch.

Finishing touches

Once you're out of the bath, dry yourself with a warm towel. Focus on how this feels. Does your body prefer being dried gently? Or vigorously? Perhaps the feelings differ across your body.

Now explore your body from head to toe, perhaps while applying a body lotion. Think about what kind of touch different parts of your body enjoy.

Experiment with different pressure and strokes, noticing what direction your body prefers. Spend some time touching your chest, particularly your nipples. This can be a pleasurable area for many men as well as women.

Move your hands down your body to focus on your stomach, hips and bottom, and finish with your inner thighs.

Your feelings

Throughout the exercise, think about how you feel. Relaxed? Invigorated? Pampered?

If you feel guilty or silly spending so much time on yourself, remind yourself that if you know your body better you're likely to enjoy sex more.

Related Information:

• Sexual Exercises Women
• Sexual Exercises Men
• Pelvic Floor Exercises for Woman

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder can look similar in children and so it can be hard to know if your child has ADHD or bipolar disorder (also known as pediatric bipolar disorder or early-onset bipolar disorder). On top of that, many children actually have both disorders and that can complicate matters further. Additionally, disorders such as disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) and conduct disorder can also be hard to differentiate from pediatric bipolar disorder. The following outlines child bipolar vs. ADHD symptoms.

Child Bipolar vs. ADHD Characteristic Diagnostic Behaviors

The following table outlines the characteristics that help diagnose bipolar disorder or ADHD in a child and how they present themselves.

It’s also important to know that children who are initially diagnosed with ADHD may eventually be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Children with severe ADHD, unstable emotions and aggression are often the ones who later develop bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder and ADHD also commonly occur together. Some studies have shown that in children with bipolar symptoms, as many as 90% also have ADHD. That percentage drops as age increases.

Child Bipolar vs ADHD: The Most Important Thing to Consider

The above shows the differences and similarities between pediatric bipolar disorder and ADHD. The most important thing to note is that when a child has bipolar disorder, behaviors and moods are episodic and behaviors are driven by mood versus in ADHD where behaviors are most consistent.

What to Do If You Think Your Child Has ADHD or Bipolar Disorder

Whether your child has ADHD or bipolar disorder, it’s critical to know that either, or both, disorders can be treated and children do much better with treatment than without.

Finally, it’s important not to diagnose your child on your own. Only a qualified mental healthcare professional like a psychiatrist can diagnose a child. When looking for a psychiatrist, it’s ideal to find someone who specializes in childhood mental illness as he or she can likely diagnose accurately and help the most.

Parenting a bipolar child can be very challenging. Part of the reason is because most parents don’t know the symptoms of bipolar disorder in children before their child is diagnosed. However, learning the facts about the illness can be extremely valuable in terms of helping a child with bipolar disorder. Read on for what you need to know when you’re raising a bipolar child.

Parenting a Child with Bipolar – What Are the Symptoms?

The symptoms of bipolar disorder in children do vary from child to child. That said, the main aspects are that of depressive moods and of manic or hypomanic moods.

A depressed mood is a very low mood, typically characterized by sadness. Living with a bipolar child you might also notice your child:

• Losing interest in previous enjoyed activities
• Feeling worthless of guilty
• Complaining about pain such as headaches and stomach pains
• Having recurrent thoughts of death or suicide

A manic mood is a highly elevated mood wherein the symptoms can be life-threatening. A hypomanic mood has the same symptoms but it less severe.

When parenting a bipolar child, you might notice your child:

• Being in an overly silly or happy mood that is different from his or her normal mood when having fun
• Having an extremely short temper which is unusual for him or her
• Sleeping little but not being tired
• Taking risky action in usual ways; seeking pleasurable activities regardless of consequences

Any of these symptoms are normal for a child some of the time, what differentiates a mental illness is their severity and continuance.

See here for more symptoms of childhood bipolar disorder.

How Is Raising a Bipolar Child Different Than Dealing with a Bipolar Adult?

Bipolar disorder that starts in childhood is known as early-onset bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, those with early-onset bipolar disorder often have a more severe course of illness and spend more time sick than their adult-onset counterparts. When raising a bipolar child, you may also notice that he or she has more frequent mood switches or more mixed moods (moods containing both depressive and manic/hypomanic symptoms) than an adult.

When parenting a bipolar child, it’s also critical to know that those with early-onset bipolar disorder are at a particularly high risk of attempting suicide.

Any signs of suicidality should be taken very seriously and reported to a healthcare professional.

Other Illnesses You Might Have to Deal with When Parenting a Bipolar Child

While some children will only develop bipolar disorder, a large percentage of children with bipolar disorder also develop comorbid conditions (other conditions simultaneously). Common comorbid conditions you may need to help a bipolar child with include:

• Substance abuse, particularly alcoholism
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Anxiety disorders such as separation anxiety or generalized anxiety disorder

Treatment When Parenting a Bipolar Child

There is no cure for bipolar disorder, but treatments are available. Medication and therapy are the two types of treatment that are most common for children with bipolar disorder and they are often used together for the best results. You should know that a child's bipolar medication may become less effective over time and need changing. Also, an important therapy to consider is family therapy due to the major impact childhood bipolar disorder has on the whole family.

Click here for more on the treatment of childhood bipolar disorder.

Getting Help for Raising a Bipolar Child

Living with a bipolar child can be extremely difficult. You absolutely need to reach out for help for the child’s sake as well as yours. If you don’t know where to start, ask your family doctor.

See here for more on how to get support when raising a bipolar child.

This list of schizophrenia symptoms can provide insight into what schizophrenia is all about.

While knowing general schizophrenia signs and symptoms is helpful, the basic symptoms can be rather vague. For example, many people have heard of hallucinations and delusions, but what do these mean for someone living with them? To understand schizophrenia, and more importantly, the people behind it, it is important to know both the basic symptoms as well as the depth of them. A schizophrenia symptoms list can be a handy go-to tool to build that understanding.

List of Core Symptoms of Schizophrenia

The authority on all mental disorders is the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5. This encyclopedia of mental disorders presents all of the symptoms and features of schizophrenia (and all mental illnesses and personality disorders.) The DSM-5 lists these characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia:

• Delusions
• Hallucinations
• Disorganized speech
• Disorganized or catatonic behavior
• Negative symptoms

List of Schizophrenia Positive Symptoms

The first four on the above list are considered positive symptoms of schizophrenia because they are things that are added to the person’s experiences. With hallucinations, for example, he will have extra-sensory experiences, like hearing things that aren’t there. This list of schizophrenia positive symptoms shows what is involved for someone with schizophrenia:

• Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, or tasting things that aren’t real
• Beliefs that aren’t based in reality, also known as thought distortions
• Bizarre delusions, such as believing that someone has stolen her internal organs and replaced them with alien parts
• Non-bizarre delusions, such as the belief that he is being followed by the police (when he is not)
• Paranoid delusions involve fear of harm and can be bizarre or non-bizarre
• Rapid thoughts that are hard to follow
• Confused speech, such as words, sentences, and whole conversations that are incoherent or jumbled
• Incoherent speech known as “word salad,” in which she uses the wrong words for objects and concepts (she might call a fork a truck and not realize that it’s incorrect)
• Derailment, or getting off track during conversations
• Responding to questions or comments in ways that aren’t related to the topic
• Difficulty putting thoughts together
• Disorganized behavior (erratic, illogical, silly, sudden and unexplained agitation displayed through shouting and yelling)
• Poor hygiene and self-care, resulting in an unkempt, disheveled appearance
• Inappropriate behavior in public, sometimes sexual in nature
• Holding rigid, bizarre postures and resistance to being moved
• Echopraxia, or random bursts of purposeless behavior
• Echolalia, or involuntarily mimicking another person’s speech

It’s important to know that people with schizophrenia can experience positive symptoms in any of these ways, but no one exhibits all of them.

Schizophrenia is different for each person.

List of Schizophrenia Negative Symptoms

In addition to the above positive symptoms are the symptoms that involve people losing important aspects of themselves. This list of schizophrenia negative symptoms illustrates what they’re like for someone living with this mental illness:

• Feelings of emptiness
• Experiencing no feelings at all
• Flat affect, in which she doesn’t smile or show emotion
• The 3 A’s: apathy, alosia, and anhedonia
  • Apathy is a very low level of enthusiasm or a sense of just not caring
  • Alosia is poverty of speech (positive speech symptoms involve things added to how someone talks, and the negative symptom, alosia, refers to speech that becomes almost nonexistent)
  • Anhedonia is a loss of the ability to feel pleasure
• Diminished reaction to other people and the environment in general
• Decrease in motivation
• Inability to form and pursue goal-directed behavior

More Symptoms of Schizophrenia

As if all of the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia weren’t disruptive enough to the person experiencing them, there are other features of this illness, too. These symptoms are cognitive, neurological, and mental health-related:

• Inappropriate displays of emotions, such as laughing or crying at bizarre times
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Anger
• Sleep disruptions and pattern changes like mixing up days and nights
• Diminished interest in eating
• Strange new feelings that are unlike how the he used to feel
• Difficulty doing everyday tasks
• Depersonalization, in which she feels unreal (can become a delusion)
• Derealization, where everything around him feels unreal (can become a delusion)
• Cognitive deficits
• Neurological problems
• Declining attention
• Social difficulties such as misinterpreting the intention of others
• Interpreting irrelevant events as meaningful (spotting a newspaper on the seat of a bus is seen as a special message that may or may not be related to the content of the paper)
• Withdrawal and isolation
• Hostility and aggression (but assault and violence with schizophrenia are uncommon)
• Neurological problems like motor skills difficulty, especially complex movements
• Confusion of right and left
• Problem-solving difficulties
• Deficits in thinking and reasoning

Clearly, schizophrenia is a complicated disorder whose symptoms can be hard to grasp. This contributes to the fact that schizophrenia is surrounded by misinformation and negative stereotypes. In reading the complete list of schizophrenia symptoms here—positive, negative, cognitive, neurological, and mental health—perhaps something will become clear: people with schizophrenia are dealing with a lot, and they are living their lives with these challenging symptoms.

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If you find yourself dealing with the diagnosis of a child with bipolar, natural questions to ask are, “How accurate is this type of diagnosis?” and “Are too many kids diagnosed with bipolar disorder?” Some studies have delved into this very question. It’s true that bipolar disorder in a young child or adolescent can be difficult to diagnose, and some suggest that this actually leads to both an overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in children.

Complicating Factors in Diagnosing a Child with Bipolar

Diagnosing a child with bipolar disorder is tough because there are no set-in-stone criteria for the diagnosis. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), which contains all criteria for all mental disorders, does not list childhood bipolar disorder separately from adult bipolar disorder. This is a problem because it is known that bipolar disorder does manifest differently in children than in adults. However, not enough study has been done to nail down these symptoms reliably.

Additionally, there is a major overlap between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and child bipolar symptoms. For example, children with either disorder can be seen as distractible and/or irritable. For this reason, there can be confusion between the two disorders and this can lead to both overdiagnosis and underdiagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Is Bipolar Disorder in Children Overdiagnosed?

A review looking at the overdiagnosis of mental illnesses in children found evidence of frequent misdiagnosis, but this is mostly a disagreement over which mental illness a youth has rather than whether a youth has a mental illness at all.

The study found that there was a major overdiagnosis of ADHD in children, especially in boys. For bipolar disorder, though, there appeared to be both an overdiagnosis and an underdiagnosis. In 2011, Chilakamarri and Filkowski looked at 64 youth, aged 7-18, with a mental illness diagnosis and found bipolar disorder was underdiagnosed. However, in 1995, Milberger et al. reevaluated cases of ADHD and co-occurring bipolar disorder and when the symptoms of ADHD were subtracted, only 56% retained their bipolar disorder diagnosis. This shows that when ADHD is present, bipolar disorder can be overdiagnosed.

How Do You Know if Your Child’s Bipolar Has Been Misdiagnosed?

There is no single, clear-cut way to ensure a child’s bipolar disorder diagnosis is accurate due to the differing opinions on how bipolar disorder manifests in children. That said, clinicians with experience in childhood bipolar disorder are more likely to be able to accurately spot its existence, or not, in your child. If you haven’t seen one of these specialists (usually a child psychiatrist), one should be sought out for confirmation of the diagnosis.

No one would say that parenting a child with bipolar disorder is a walk in the park and reaching out for support for parents of bipolar children can be critical for the wellness of both the parents and the child. Initially, parents may not want to reach out for support because they feel there is stigma against having a child with bipolar and may even feel like it’s their fault. However, support for parents of children with bipolar disorder can help parents realize that a child’s bipolar disorder is not their fault and the stigma is something that can be fought.

Parents Need Support When Parenting a Bipolar Child

Parents have a hard job. Raising a new human being is never easy. But when that child has a severe mental illness, the process gets even more challenging. And parents often feel alone with this challenge. It often seems like they are the only ones who understand the challenge and they are fighting this battle alone.

But this isn’t true. Support for parents of a bipolar child is available and getting it can be like a light in the darkness.

Benefits of Reaching Out for Bipolar Child Parenting Support

Because parents with a bipolar child are having parenting experiences with which others may not identify, it’s critical to seek out other parents having the same types of experiences. These shared parenting experiences can start to create a community so that parents don’t feel so alone. This type of community can support a parent through the challenges of parenting a bipolar child. Not only can they hear about issues and identify with them, but they may have ideas on how to handle tough situations. These communities are often found in support groups for parents of bipolar children.

Additionally, there is a stigma against having a child with a serious mental illness. Others may look at you and assume you are a bad parent because your child is having such behavioral issues. Others may judge you and assume that mental illness in children doesn’t really exist. Reaching out for bipolar child parenting support can help you find the strength to fight this stigma and these misguided ideas. It’s like having an army of other parents behind you, supporting you.

And it’s important to remember that a bipolar child can affect the family as a whole and support can help the entire family.

Where to Find Bipolar Child Parenting Support

Parents of bipolar children can reach out in many ways. The first place to start is normally the treating doctor. Others who can help include:

• Mental health specialists, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers or mental health counselors
• Health maintenance organizations
• Community mental health centers
• Hospital psychiatry departments and outpatient clinics (emergency room doctors may be able to provide temporary assistance and point towards other resources)
• Mental health programs at universities or medical schools
• State hospital outpatient clinics
• Family services, social agencies, or clergy
• Peer support groups
• Private clinics and facilities
• Employee assistance programs
• Local medical and/or psychiatric societies

Find these bipolar child parenting support resources by Googling your area plus the above. Also, contacting your local National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) can be very helpful as they can point you towards specific, local resources. See here for NAMI’s information for family members and caregivers and also their search tool to find a local NAMI support group. They exist in most medium and large cities across the United States.