There are many families who have children and teenagers with bipolar disorder.

It usually
takes a long time to find a medicine that effectively treat bipolar symptoms. Currently,
antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers are types of medicine commonly used to
treat bipolar disorder. The goal of this research was to identify the best type of medicine to treat
bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. A meta analysis, investigating various studies on the
medicines was conducted. A chart was created with columns on the response rate for mania and
depression, and whether there was a recurrence of mania or depression while on the medicine.
Once the chart was filled, graphs were made to help analyze results. It was found that
antipsychotics caused the most significant reduction in manic symptoms (9.1 to 6.7 response
rate) the fastest, but also had the most severe side effects. Antidepressants were also not shown to
cause a relapse of mania (Most in a medicine being 5% of patients). Some patients on mood
stabilizers had a reduction in manic symptoms. Other patients who took mood stabilizers had the
most manic symptoms. Antidepressants were not shown to be effective in treating mania. All
three types of medicine were shown to treat bipolar depression. The implications of the results
are antipsychotics should be used at first when symptoms are very severe while they are on mood
stabilizers and then be weaned off when mood stabilizers start to work. Mood stabilizers should
be the primary option when treating bipolar disorder in children and teens. The final product of
this research will be a lesson to taught to psychology students at Reservoir High School to
educate the community about bipolar disorder.