The authors interviewed 17 adolescent inpatients and their mothers with
the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged
Children and Adolescents, Epidemiological Version (K-SADS-E), a
semistructured interview that generates RDC and DSM-III diagnoses for major
affective disorders and nonaffective psychoses and DSM-III diagnoses for
dysthymic, cyclothymic, and other selected disorders. Five of the patients
(29%) satisfied DSM-III criteria for bipolar disorder or atypical bipolar
(bipolar II) disorder, although these diagnoses had not been identified in
the hospital charts. These data support previous findings that bipolar
disorder occurs moderately frequently in adolescent inpatients, although it
is often unrecognized. Moreover, the disorder can be readily identified
with structured diagnostic methods.
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