A recent study showed that bipolar children spend less time making eye contact with people – looking at their eyes – versus typical children. Instead of looking at the eyes, bipolar children and children with severe mood dysregulation in the study spent less time looking at the eyes when observing faces. Instead, they spent more time with their eyes on the mouth and nose.
U.S. National Institute of Mental Health investigators suggested the eye contact habits of bipolar children as a possible explanation why these children have trouble determining how other people feel.
This study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so it should be considered preliminary. If accepted by the psychiatric community, this eye contact research may help develop treatment plans that education bipolar children guess the emotional state of people by looking more often at the eyes. In turn, they may process emotional information more accurately, which could help them regulate their feelings when interacting with others.