What are the chance that they too might have cyclothymia or other mood disorders?
A. Your son and daughter would be at increased risk for a mood disorder, because like many medical conditions, mood disorders tend to run in families. This tendency of occurring in biologic relatives is seen with lots of conditions including heart disease, allergies, and asthma. However, just because there could be a genetic component, that does not mean that the condition will occur in all offspring, or even in a major proportion of the children who have a parent with the condition. It simply means that the chance of developing a cyclothymia or another mood disorder would be somewhat greater than in a family with no history of mood disorders. Early symptoms of cyclothymia in a teenager might include sleep problems, anger, irritability, declining school performance, difficulties with friends and peers, major conflicts with parents or siblings. This is a difficult diagnosis to make because we see many of these symptoms in teenagers without mood problems. In the child with a mood disorde
