Manic-Depressive Illness in Early Adolescence: A Study of Clinical and Diagnostic Characteristics in Six Cases

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Abstract

The clinical phenomenology and course of illness was studied retrospectively in six cases with onset of bipolar manic-depressive illness in early adolescence. Despite original chart diagnoses of schizophrenia in all cases, systematic evaluation of case-record data indicated that diagnostic manifestations of affective disorder were identifiable even at the onset of illness. A brief review of the literature on psychosis in adolescence is presented and we discuss several factors contributing to diagnostic error in these cases.

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    This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, Houston, October 1977.

    Reprints may be requested from the authors at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA Center for the Health Sciences, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

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