Bipolar
Disorder
Bipolar
disorder used to be called ‘manic depression’. As the older
name suggests, someone with bipolar disorder will have severe
mood swings. These usually last several weeks or months and are
far beyond what most of us experience. They are:
Low
or ‘depresive’ – Feelings of intense depression
and despair
High or ‘manic’
– feelings of extreme happiness and despair
Mixed
– for example, depressed mood with the restlessness and
overactivity of a manic episode
About
1 in every 100 adults has bipolar disorder at some point in
their life. It usually starts during or after the teenage years.
It is unusual for it to start after the age of 40. Men and women
are affected equally.
It
used to be thought that if an individual had bipolar disorder,
they would return to normal in between mood swings. It is now
known that this is not so for many people with bipolar disorder.
They may continue to experience mild depressive symptoms and
problems in thinking even when they seem to be better.
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