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health advisory Hospital Mental Health 2007-11-15 19:00:30

what are the symptoms?

Answer:

Um my life. It's also known as Bipolar disorder. It is a mood disorder that is closely related to schizophrenia although not the same thing. It's characterized by periods of mania (hyper activity, muscular agitiation, irritability, erratic behavior, super man syndrome, scattered racing thoughts, quick speech, careless and often dangerous behavior to name a few). There are also periods of depression in which the symptoms are those of clinical depression and range in severity. You are diagnosed when you fit a certain number of symptoms in both categories of the disorder. People who are diagnosed are likely to have one or two major episodes in their lifetime that result in hospitalization some may have more. It is different for everyone, having general groups defined as bipolar one and bipolar 2. The 2nd group tends not have full blown mania symptoms and rather they have something called hypo-mania which can be considered similar to a "coke high" Some bipolar people have something called rapid cycling which means that their moods shift anywhere from several times daily to several serious mood changes in a week. Moods vary from depressed, manic, normal, or anger. Symptoms are more severe when they are found in young children but doctors tend not to diagnose children under 18 unless they shows obvious signs of it. Bipolar disorder is treated a number of ways most commonly medicated with anti-depressants and mood stabilizers, also talk therapy like cognitive Behavioral therapy (CBT) and Psychoanalysis. There is also light therapy, and ECT ( where they shock you, doctors don't really do this anymore). BP is very hard to treat , usually when you start to feel good you stop taking medication, but sadly many people will need medication for life. Also there aren't sure about it's origins but they now that it's not having enough serotonin and a build up of other hormones that causes a chemical imbalance, they belIEve it to be genetic. Because they don't fully understand the disorder it's hard to give specific cures for everyone, esp since it takes some people several years to find something that works. Bipolar disorder is worse than straight depression (unipolar) in my opinion because it's hard to handle the constant mood shifts and makes functioning even harder. i hope i answered your question, i speak from personal experience and learning about the disorder in order to help deal with it after having been diagnosed for 4 years. Many many many people suffer from this disorder and even more are said to have it and not know, the longer it goes untreated the worse it gets and can end in suicide. It is more common in women they say because we tend to already be unbalanced in hormones ie PMS) Lots of celebrities and famous artists and writers have been diagnosed. Patsy Cline and Robert Downey Jr. to name two. You can find a lot of helpful information on the web. sites like the NIMH (national institute of Mental Health) and wikipedia offer the most information. Movies about it are Prozac nation and a very good book about it is the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Also on TV Billy Chenowith from Six Feet Under has a severe case of bipolar disorder.

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it's bi-polar disorder. I've added a link to the NIMH information on it. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/healthinformatio...

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Bipolar disorder Type I, Type II and cyclothymic disorder is the current terminology for what used to be called manic depression.