Bipolar disorder is a complex condition in which people suffer from dramatic shifts in their activity levels, mood and energy that are so severe that they affect the person’s ability to carry out everyday tasks.
Everyone experiences some ups and downs in attitude during their daily lives. For people with bipolar disorder, these swings are more intense. They may frequently occur so they can totally disrupt their everyday lives.
Previously referred to as manic-depressive illness, the disorder is characterized by feelings of either extreme depression, sometimes bordering on suicidal thoughts, or alternately of mania and euphoria, in which the person cannot stop working, talking or engaging in highly repetitive behaviors. These shifts lead to the initial labeling of the condition as ‘manic depression’, but recent investigations have shown that the condition is more complex, and the terms bipolar I and bipolar II are now more properly used.
Bipolar I is diagnosed when a person undergoes at least one manic episode of high activity, excitement and disruptive behavior. In a manic episode, a person may become delusional and behave strangely, indulge in wild sexual encounters, spend excessive amounts of money, and spout grandiose ideas. Basically, he or she has lost touch with reality.
A person may also undergo a complete turnaround and suffer from periods of deep depression. In many ways, the periods of depression closely resemble chronic clinical depression, with low energy and activity, a sense of worthlessness or guilt, and these can go as far as suicidal thoughts. Symptoms of bipolar I depression can last for weeks or months, and can cycle back into a manic phase without any signs or warnings.
Bipolar II differs from Bipolar I mainly in the level of the “ups” experienced in a mania phase (labeled as a hypomanic episode.) People only feel more positive and excited, and rarely get into a full-blown mania in which they engage in reckless behavior. The clinical depression phases mirror the ones experienced by people with bipolar I. Almost all individuals with bipolar I disorder will develop depression episodes after their first manic episode.
Between two and three percent of the U.S. population suffers from either form of bipolar disorder, amounting to nearly six million people.
The disorder is highly heritable, with 70 to 80 percent of people with the disorder having at least one relative with either bipolar disorder or clinical depression. In the United States, the mean age of onset is in the early 20s.
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