Hi houghchrst!!

My son was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 7. Immediately his dad was all gungho about getting him on medication. His stepmom (who is also a nurse like I am) and I.....not so much. We kind of ganged up on him and told him that until the ADHD started effecting his school work, classroom and grades negatively we won't be medicating him.

He is 15 now and in 10th grade and while the unmedicated ADHD is still not effecting school at all. He has always been a straight A student. He started taking 2 AP classes in 8th grade (math & Science) and is still in them and is also taking Anatomy and Physiology (He wants to be a DR.) as an elective.

When he was diagnosed, we had taken him to the DR because he was having these unexplained angry outbursts among a handful of other little weird quirks we were worried about. The last year I have noticed these angry outbursts happening more frequently and with more intensity than before. I started doing some research a few months ago and started coming across all these articles written about how in children, Bipolar Disorder and ADHD have some symptoms that overlap. This makes it hard to diagnose either or in a child and why a lot of children are misdiagnosed as one or the other or both.

Reading your post made me wonder if his dr was like "Screw it. I can't make up my mind on which I think it is, so we will treat both and see which medication works and take him off the med that doesn't. Boom, problem solved." I also started wondering if the Vyvanse wasn't exacerbating his Anxiety Disorder causing him to become so manic. If you take stimulant drugs and don't actually have ADHD it's really just medical grade speed. Could you imagine having a serious anxiety disorder and being all messed up on a potent stimulating drug. Poor kid, no wonder he became manic. I'm so glad that he was finally properly diagnosed.

It ****** me off that Dr's won't listen to their patients or patients caregivers more. I never realized just how awful the healthcare system really was until my husband was diagnosed with RSD 10 years ago.

They think that really expensive degree they have proves that they are smarter and more inferior to us little people. Here is the thing though, they might have fancy degrees and a pretty little title after their name but they have absolutely no idea what is really going on inside of us. Just because a couple of symptoms we are presenting doesn't fit the little cookie cutter diagnosis mold they are trying to stuff us in at the time, they tell us we are lying or drug seeking or they end up misdiagnosing.

OR if you try and make a suggestion about anything involving your diagnosis and treatment plan, some will shrug it off maybe laugh or make a sarcastic joke about it, but most get really mad or indignant or holier than thou. And then if they decide not to kick you out of their practice for questioning them, they treat you like garbage and give you subpar care, which is completely against their Hippocratic Oath.

Sorry, I kinda just went off there. I'm having a ridiculously horrible day today coupled with the fact I'm not really feeling all warm and fuzzy towards not only Dr's but the healthcare system as a whole today. Lol!!

AND the whole point of this long *** post is:::

You should really google: Bipolar Disorder presenting as ADHD in children and read some of those articles.