Bipolar Disorder In Everyday Life

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Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that can affect a person’s everyday life. It consists of mood swings that are hard to cope with. About 5.7 million people older than 18 in the United States are diagnose with bipolar disorder in a year. People with bipolar disorder can find it hard to cope with everyday life. During their emotional low or depression, people lose interest in activities that they enjoyed before. When they are feeling emotionally high, they feel full of energy and may do things and they aren’t supposed to do; such as buying things with money that they don’t have. Even though there are medications, many bipolar patients feel hopeless and confused. Bipolar disorder is can also be called manic-depression. A misbelief about the …show more content…
On the contrary, there are many different types of this disorder. Bipolar One is having one manic episode that lasted one week. A manic episode is when someone has an elevated emotion (happy); a depressive episode is being sad. (Assocation 2006) Bipolar Two is being depressed for two weeks and not having a manic episode. The third type is called Cyclothymic disorder, which is less severe. People who are Cyclothymic are hypomanic and mildly depressive for about two years. Rapid-cycling Bipolar Disorder is considered one of the most severe forms; which consists of people having rapid mood swings and affects women more than men. (National Institute of Mental Health …show more content…
If a patient describes their symptoms (doctors will not technically be able to measure/test it, so it’s a symptom) and the doctor then determines if they have bipolar disorder. After determining that they do in fact have bipolar disorder, the doctor will then have to figure out what level or type of bipolar disorder the patient has. While doing this, the doctor will probably do other tests; such as testing thyroid levels or making sure the patient has not used drugs recently. This will help the doctor rule out other illnesses that could be affected a patient’s mood. Less commonly used are physical tests; such as urine or blood samples. Bipolar disorder does show proof of existence in blood and urine, but it is easier to be diagnosed with other testing, such as psychological tests. (Brian Krans