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Q: 'Mental or Reading Blocks' & Studying
After I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1984 during my last
semester of high school, I noticed a drastic change in my level of concentration
and extreme difficulties in reading. Fortunately, I finished undergraduate
school, in a ten year period. Now, I am desperately trying to muster up
the strength for graduate school; however, I have started and stopped three
times after experiencing "mental or reading blocks" when it came time for
studying. Are there any tests or medications that I can take to determine
where to go from here?
Thank you,
Dear Mr. J' --
This is tricky. There's some sort of relationship between bipolar disorder
and "ADHD", and it almost sounds as though you got the latter when you
got the former. However, most of my patients who have symptoms like yours
also have other mood symptoms. So I usually focus on the mood symptoms,
and try to get those controlled first (this is the general consensus among mood
experts, regarding the order in which to treat BP and ADHD symptoms). Then
if attention problems persist, I might consider adding a stimulant, and
several of my patients have done extremely well with such a regimen -- including
going back to school and starting new jobs. So far it does not seem as
though the stimulant, which I am generally very reluctant to add, has been a
destabilizing agent in these select patients -- but there are child/adolescent
specialists who do worry about that potential.
So, whether you got yourself formal testing or a
specialist diagnosis of ADHD or not, I think this is the kind of consideration
you'd end up coming down to anyway: should you add a stimulant and how
much risk to your bipolar disorder might that present? However, I'm not an
ADHD specialist and there might be other tools to consider that I'm not aware
of.
Finally, I should also note that I've seen such
attention problems resolve when the mood symptoms were controlled, at least as
often as not -- though we don't know from your question whether mood
symptoms are present for you at all; perhaps not. I hope you find
something that will allow you to take that next step.
Dr. Phelps
Published March, 2003
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