Bipolar disorder usually strikes between the ages of 15 and 25, and is extremely rare in preteens, according to a major study: Age at onset versus family history and clinical outcomes in 1,665 international bipolar-I disorder patients
The findings are old hat. It's long been known that manic-depression most often begins around the age of 20, give or take a few years. Onset in later life is less common while earlier onset is very unusual.
The main graph could have been lifted from any psychiatry textbooks of the last century:
The red bars are the data. Ignore the black line, that just shows an imaginary 'even' distribution over the lifespan.
Why am I blogging about these remarkably unremarkable results? Because they undermines the theory, popular in certain quarters but highly controversial, that 'child bipolar' or 'pediatric bipolar' is a major health problem.
The study confirmed that early-onset bipolar I does ...
