There are millions of people in the world who suffer from several forms of mental illness. One such disorder is bipolar depressive or Bipolar disorder. It is a disorder that affects more than six million people in the U.S. alone. Bipolar disorder is a disorder that affects the brain due to minor defects in the key brain regions responsible for emotional processing and thereby affecting an individual’s emotion or mood. In this disorder, the patient suffers from certain mood displays of either extreme euphoria or extreme depression. In the earlier days, these displays were more commonly called manic-depressive illness and they were not further subdivided.
There are millions of people in the world who suffer from several forms of mental illness. One such disorder is bipolar depressive or Bipolar disorder. It is a disorder that affects more than six million people in the U.S. alone. Bipolar disorder is a disorder that affects the brain due to minor defects in the key brain regions responsible for emotional processing and thereby affecting an individual’s emotion or mood. In this disorder, the patient suffers from certain mood displays of either extreme euphoria or extreme depression. In the earlier days, these displays were more commonly called manic-depressive illness and they were not further subdivided.
Bipolar disorder is the mental malaise of mood swinging from the ethereal and euphoric stages or what is defined as mania to sudden feelings of despondency, loss and unworthiness. The patient loses self-confidence and becomes very unstable, irritated and depressed. Theclinical term for this condition is bipolar depressive. The degree or severity to which these mood swings occur, help the experts define the bipolar disorder type. Thus, four categories are found across the spectrum of this disorder.
At one end is the Bipolar I type where both the poles of extremity are displayed by the patient. In Bipolar II type, the mania or the higher pole is not as severe as in Bipolar I and the abnormal manic behavior is mild. This is called hypomanic attack. Moreover, a person affected with Bipolar I disorder generally suffers at least one attack of mania without the associated depressed symptoms. Bipolar depressive patients show that the symptoms are slightly different from that of the Unipolar disorder. A Unipolar disorder happens when the mind shows a malfunction forcing the patient to act abnormally and depressed. The cause of the depression in children or in adults and the incidence of occurrences are being studied by experts to confirm the clinical diagnosis and determine the appropriate drugs and to be given to such patients.
Bipolar depressive disorder is sometimes associated with other morbidities increasing the risk factors in patients. Unfortunately, patients are not correctly diagnosed for a particular type of disorder and this lowers the chances for cure in such patients. This is because distinguishing the symptoms of Unipolar and bipolar disorder is a major challenge and the methods to treat them are different. This increases the risk by almost 10% that Unipolar depressive patients would eventually progress into bipolar patients.
Children are the targets of bipolar depressive disorder. The exact age of the onset is difficult to define therefore preventive care is very essential if the family has a history of the disorder. Early intervention along with advanced techniques of diagnosis could help many adolescents from experiencing the humiliation of a manic episode or the more harmful depressive episodes. Sometimes, the extreme depressive state could lead to suicide attempts.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080831114715.htm