What Are Bipolar Mood Disorders?
Bipolar Mood Disorder, or simply Bipolar Disorder, is a disease that involves extreme mood changes.
The sufferer goes from very happy, high energy phases, then swings down to deep depression.
It is to be hoped that the person concerned is married, or lives with other family members, so that the disease may be spotted early on.
When in the depressive state, whoever has Bipolar Disorder may very well consider suicide.
This would be in Bipolar One, which is the worse of the two types.
Bipolar Two has the same symptoms and behaves in the same way, but isn't so severe.
Reckless and out of character behaviour is one thing to watch out for.
Supposing Uncle Charlie, who's a staid, responsible accountant, suddenly grabs his nephew's 1200 c.
c.
motor bike and goes roaring off up the road, coattails flying, hair all over the place, then something is obviously very wrong.
Under normal circumstances, Uncle Charlie thinks that motor bikes were invented by the devil.
He wouldn't be seen anywhere near one.
So it's obvious that a switch has tripped in his mind somewhere to cause him to do something so totally different to his usual routine.
Add to that, when he returns, he skips through the front door whistling some pop tune and hands his wife a little package, in which is a lovely diamond ring.
Normally, parting Uncle Charlie from his money is a task his wife has long since given up to God alone.
He levels off a bit over the next few days, and then starts feeling more and more sad and miserable.
Finally, he reaches a point where he finds it very difficult to climb out of bed in the morning, and even when he does so, all he feels like doing is going and sitting in front of the television in an almost catatonic state.
Obviously, his wife's extremely worried about him and one night, when he goes up for his usual bath, his wife decides to follow him.
She goes into the bathroom just in time to watch the water turning red where Charlie has slit his wrists in a suicide attempt.
She calls 911, and Charlie finds himself set on the long, hard road to recovery.
The therapist asks him a lot of questions.
Does he have much sleep? No, doesn't seem to need it when he's happy.
Now, he's so miserable, it's all he can do to leave his bed.
His wife tells her that he talks non-stop when he's happy, but now, as depressed as he is, you can hardly get a word out of him.
"When I'm happy, I have all manner of thoughts racing through my brain," confides Charlie.
They tell the therapist about the motor bike episode, and she tells them that Charlie definitely has Bipolar Disorder.
Charlie has to take pills called mood stabilizers, and others with the alarming name of antipsychotics.
The latter help to bring his manic phase under control, and the doctor also prescribes antidepressants, which must be taken with extreme caution.
These are fine for someone suffering just with depression, but when you throw mania into the mix, the antidepressants can turn on the patient and bring back the manic moods again.
He finds he has to pay a few visits to the doctor to find medications that are right for him.
What suits one person certainly won't necessarily suit another.
Again, as in most other mental illnesses, no-one knows what causes Bipolar Mood Disorder.
Almost certainly an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, but exactly what, still eludes them.
The estimate is that about 1% of the American population suffers from the disease, and it appears to be the same percentage in other countries.
Here we have the old story, though.
A lot of people don't seek treatment, so the figures could be considerably higher
The sufferer goes from very happy, high energy phases, then swings down to deep depression.
It is to be hoped that the person concerned is married, or lives with other family members, so that the disease may be spotted early on.
When in the depressive state, whoever has Bipolar Disorder may very well consider suicide.
This would be in Bipolar One, which is the worse of the two types.
Bipolar Two has the same symptoms and behaves in the same way, but isn't so severe.
Reckless and out of character behaviour is one thing to watch out for.
Supposing Uncle Charlie, who's a staid, responsible accountant, suddenly grabs his nephew's 1200 c.
c.
motor bike and goes roaring off up the road, coattails flying, hair all over the place, then something is obviously very wrong.
Under normal circumstances, Uncle Charlie thinks that motor bikes were invented by the devil.
He wouldn't be seen anywhere near one.
So it's obvious that a switch has tripped in his mind somewhere to cause him to do something so totally different to his usual routine.
Add to that, when he returns, he skips through the front door whistling some pop tune and hands his wife a little package, in which is a lovely diamond ring.
Normally, parting Uncle Charlie from his money is a task his wife has long since given up to God alone.
He levels off a bit over the next few days, and then starts feeling more and more sad and miserable.
Finally, he reaches a point where he finds it very difficult to climb out of bed in the morning, and even when he does so, all he feels like doing is going and sitting in front of the television in an almost catatonic state.
Obviously, his wife's extremely worried about him and one night, when he goes up for his usual bath, his wife decides to follow him.
She goes into the bathroom just in time to watch the water turning red where Charlie has slit his wrists in a suicide attempt.
She calls 911, and Charlie finds himself set on the long, hard road to recovery.
The therapist asks him a lot of questions.
Does he have much sleep? No, doesn't seem to need it when he's happy.
Now, he's so miserable, it's all he can do to leave his bed.
His wife tells her that he talks non-stop when he's happy, but now, as depressed as he is, you can hardly get a word out of him.
"When I'm happy, I have all manner of thoughts racing through my brain," confides Charlie.
They tell the therapist about the motor bike episode, and she tells them that Charlie definitely has Bipolar Disorder.
Charlie has to take pills called mood stabilizers, and others with the alarming name of antipsychotics.
The latter help to bring his manic phase under control, and the doctor also prescribes antidepressants, which must be taken with extreme caution.
These are fine for someone suffering just with depression, but when you throw mania into the mix, the antidepressants can turn on the patient and bring back the manic moods again.
He finds he has to pay a few visits to the doctor to find medications that are right for him.
What suits one person certainly won't necessarily suit another.
Again, as in most other mental illnesses, no-one knows what causes Bipolar Mood Disorder.
Almost certainly an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, but exactly what, still eludes them.
The estimate is that about 1% of the American population suffers from the disease, and it appears to be the same percentage in other countries.
Here we have the old story, though.
A lot of people don't seek treatment, so the figures could be considerably higher