Oh, a word on misdiagnoses---the diagnostic criteria for some things, like ODD, are vague and overbroad.
The diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder are not.
Bipolar disorder can look like something else if the doctor has a limited set of observations of the patient's behavior. It can look like depression if the doctor doesn't know about the manic phases. It can look a bit like schizophrenia, briefly, if all the doctor has seen is a manic patient being psychotic.
There's *nothing* else that looks like bipolar disorder.
If, without drugs, the patient has had more than one episode of clinical depression AND the patient has either had a manic episode on his/her own or had a manic episode in reaction to a normal dose of certain antidepressants, that patient damned well *has* got one of the two bipolar disorders.
If you meet the diagnostic criteria, you've got it, you'll always have it, and you might have something else, too, but ain't no way you *don't* have it.
If a doctor makes a firm diagnosis of bipolar disorder (rather than just telling the parents it's a possibility) without the patient meeting the diagnostic criteria, then that's obviously a case of medical malpractice.
You should never accept a diagnosis of one of the major mental illness for yourself, your spouse, or your child without getting an independent second opinion from a second qualified psychiatrist who has no relationship to the first one.
People don't get misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder by two independent psychiatrists. If two independent psychiatrists say you or your spouse or your child is bipolar, *BELIEVE THEM*.
