Can a person be diagnosed with bipolar at an adult age?

Eh, it’s britney spears so you never know.

I’m not a fan of Britney Spears, but I was just curious about people being diagnosed at adult age.

Of course. While people who are bipolar are assumed to have been born with a predisposition to the disorder, real symptoms of it may not show up or be triggered until adulthood. There are many indicators of psychopathology in children that people just don’t recognize for a variety of reasons- lack of and mis-education being a few. A psychological disorder doesnt begin existing when it is diagnosed, any more than a virus begins existing in some one before when it first shows up on a medical test.

That sounds like a pr stunt to try to get people hyped about her more. It’ll be “awww, poor britany, no wonder she’s the way she is….” for a while now. Whatever keeps her in the spotlight is what they will do. Then again, who knows.

Bipolar disorder can be diagnosed as an adult because the symptons may become worse as the person ages maybe because of stress or other factors in a person’s life

my counselor said certain people have the predisposition to be bipolar but something traumatic can bring it out. My firstborn son died in the hospital shortly after birth. That’s what did it for me.

Due to the very nature of bipolar disorder, it is often not diagnosed until adulthood, often in the late-20s to early-30s. Typical markers begin to manifest themselves in late adolescence and early adulthood, but diagnosis can take a decade or more. It’s not a single illness, but rather a category of disorders and, because it is episodic by nature, it takes many, many years for a solid diagnosis to emerge.

The NIMH believes that there is no single cause of bipolar disorder and there remains no proven organic cause. There is sometimes a genetic predisposition, as it can run in a family, but it is just as often unrelated to genetics. There is no single genetic marker, either, which makes finding the link difficult.

As for Britney, there is no possible way to tell from her public outbursts exactly what is going on. She doesn’t seem to be exhibiting any of the tell-tale signs of classic biploar disorder, but has obviously had some sort of mental breakdown. She looks to be having a sort of psychotic break or a series of them – disorganized thought, socially odd behavior and impairment being signs – and psychosis is an extreme edge of the manic phases, but it is much more likely that it is a function of her insane stress level or severe clinical depression than bipolar disorder.

Yes my mother was, 2 years ago.

I was, but I think that I have been this way for years and it wasn’t diagnosed. Of course I also have a frontal lobe brain injury, and that can lead to people exhibiting bipolar symptoms. The jury is still out on exactly when I became bipolar, before or after I was brain injured

My bipolar was finally correctly diagnosed at the age of 31…about a year after my divorce