What Is Bipolar
What is bipolar disorder, and how is it treated? Bipolar disorder is mental disease. It's a brain disorder causing an abnormal shifting of a person's moods from one category to another, and/or from one extreme to another. Another name for bipolar disorder is manic-depressive illness. The symptoms are either manic, which can be called "highs", or depressive, which are of course the "lows". To be correctly diagnosed as having a bipolar disorder, an individual exhibits several of the symptoms, and generally will experience frequent, and sometimes dramatic, mood swings.
We all have our highs and lows, periods of exuberance, and periods of depression. That is more or less a normal part of life, and should not be a cause for concern. An onset of bipolar disorder can occur at any time during one's life, but most typically occurs in early adulthood. The onset may not be sudden, and the symptoms may be mild. A person can therefore suffer many years from the disease without knowing it, or without close acquaintances recognizing what is in effect bipolar behavior. It is a long-term illness, and once diagnosed, must be treated as such. There are generally no silver bullets as far a cure is concerned, but treatment has improved significantly in recent years.
In its worst form, the ill person can become extremely agitated, even violent. He or she can suffer from delusions of grandeur to feelings of persecution. From feeling super-human and becoming intensively active, to being consumed by thoughts of worthlessness, death or suicide.
A person may suffer from chronic depression. That may not be bipolar. Yet another person may not be able to do anything, walk, talk, or work, without doing it at 60 miles per hours. That is being hyperactive, not necessarily bipolar. The person having bipolar behavior will, with some exceptions, swing between these extremes, at times quite frequently, perhaps several times in the course of a day.
Those experiencing mild symptoms can generally live a more or less normal life. However, if not treated, the symptoms tend to worsen as the years pass. If this does not happen, or happens slowly, the person is said to have a bipolar type 2 disorder. When a person experiences more or less frequent shifts to and from manic to depressive episodes, or if the symptoms are more severe, the person is said to suffer from a bipolar type 1 disorder. Both types need treatment, but obviously a bipolar type 2 disorder can be more difficult to detect.
Though not common in very young children, instances of bipolar disorder can occur. The problem with very young children is that it is often difficult to distinguish between what is bipolar behavior and what is hyperactive behavior, short attention spans, or temper tantrums, as often associated with the "terrible twos".
Treatment of bipolar disorder is usually in the form of long-term preventative treatment, due to the long term and recurring nature of the disease. A course of treatment often includes keeping a record or log of the patients behavior, perhaps even on a daily basis. Medications are available including several categorized as mood stabilizers. Lithium is widely used, both in controlling bipolar episodes, and as a preventative to such episodes. A combination of medicines is often prescribed, and typically, continually adjusted. Patients may overreact to certain medications at certain times, and go into rapid cycles of behavioral changes. Medications then need to be adjusted to stabilize the condition.
Psychotherapy is also employed, and can be of significant help to many patients in dealing with mood changes. Even some herbal supplements appear to be helpful, but for the most part this path of treatment remains generally unproven. In the more extreme cases, involving psychotic behavior, or where there is a potential for attempts of suicide, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been shown to be very effective, but must be applied with caution.
No matter how serious or how mild symptoms may be, it needs to be recognized that bipolar disorder, at the present time, has no known cure. Fortunately, there is much that can be done to lessen or manage the symptoms.