Do People Of All Ages Get Bipolar Disorder, And How Does Bipolar Disorder Manifest Itself At Different Ages?

— -- Question: Do people of all ages get bipolar disorder, and how does bipolar disorder manifest itself at different stages of the life cycle?

Answer: Bipolar disorder can start really at any time in your life. It can start in children, in adolescence, in adults and in older adults. And depending on when the illness starts, the symptoms could be different. In children, in the young children, the illness starts slowly.

And, sometimes it involves changes in mood and irritability, and aggression, and changes in attention and difficult behavior. Mood swings can happen several times during the day. In adolescences and in adults, the illness can start either with a manic episode, or with depressed episode. The most common age of onset of the illness, is young adulthood in the late teens and early 20s. Sometimes the illness can start even very late in life, when people are 50 or 60. In elderly people, when bipolar illness starts, it's usually related with some other brain disorder that may happen at the same time that can be connected to cardiovascular disease or even early dementia.

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