Once it had been established in the mid-1990s that bipolar disorder affects around 1-1.5 percent of children and adolescents, child mental health researchers who study this disorder had a new problem--how to differentiate the emotional volatility associated with bipolar disorder and that found in ADHD. While not included in the core definition of ADHD, a significant number of children and adults who have ADHD have difficulty regulating their emotions.

To further complicate matters, there is a significant amount of comorbidity--or, two separate disorders existing together in the same person--between ADHD and Bipolar Disorder. Around 80-90 percent of children with bipolar disorder also have ADHD. Among young people with ADHD, as many as 10-15 percent also have bipolar disorder. (ADHD is the far more common of the two: Around 4-8 percent of people have ADHD, while only around 1 percent have bipolar disorder.)

Here, in an interview conducted following his Grand Rounds presentation at the NYU Child Study Center on June 22, 2012, Steve V. Faraone, PhD, discusses the link between executive functions and emotionality in ADHD. Executive functions control the brain's ability to plan, organize, rein in impulses and generally get things done. Dr. Faraone discusses the connection between deficits in executive functions, and the emotionality associated with ADHD, in which people have a hard time keeping emotional responses in check. Just as with issues with attention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, those with ADHD may have trouble controlling behavior.

Dr. Faraone is the director of child and adolescent psychiatry research, and the director of medical genetics research, as well as professor of psychiatry and of neuroscience and physiology at SUNY Upstate Medical University.

His Grand Rounds presentation at the NYU Langone Child Study Center was entitled "Irritable ADHD: Deficient Emotional Self Regulation or Mania?" Learn more about NYU Langone's Child Study Center: [ Ссылка ].

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