Photo: Todor Tsvetkov/Getty ImagesWhen it comes to bouts of teenage rage, there are tantrums—and then there are tantrums. Diagnosable ones. More on Shine: How Will the New Definition of Autism in DSM-5 Affect Children? Parents, Advocates Anxious Over Changes.
Many kids prone to explosive anger, in fact, are labeled bipolar. It’s part of the reason that, in the past decade alone, diagnoses of the disorder in children have soared by a staggering 40 percent, with some estimates putting the prevalence rate as high as 3 percent in adolescents. And that’s particularly noteworthy considering that, before the mid-1990s, almost no one diagnosed bipolar disorder in kids.
