Bipolar disorder: symptoms, treatment, and causes

You may have met someone who can instantly go from being angry to melancholy. It may be a bipolar disorder. It is also called manic depression. It’s a mental illness that can cause you to experience excessive highs and lows in your emotions. Depressed people often feel unhappy or hopeless and have little interest in doing anything besides lying in bed all day. When your mood shifts to mania, you feel like you have more energy and get irritated most of the time.

Changes in your mood can affect your sleep energy, decision-making ability, behavior, and thinking ability. Mood swings can happen sometimes or multiple times in a year. This disorder is something that stays with you for the rest of your life. By sticking to a therapy regimen, your mood swings can be controlled. Medication and talk therapy are highly effective in treating Bipolar Disorder.

What is Bipolar Disorder?

Manic depression or bipolar disorder are both one and the same. In this disorder, you may feel your mood, behavior, energy, and ability to function change. It remains for hours rather than days. It can affect relationships with your partner and cause difficulty focusing on work. This trait is frequently transmitted through generations. In other words, it can be hereditary. People who have this disorder may have anxiety issues, substance use problems, or ADHD. The number of suicides may be higher among people with bipolar disorder than normal people. There are three distinct labels that can be applied to someone with this disease.

·       Bipolar I Disorder: 

In this case, you may experience a manic episode. People who share manic episodes feel like they have more energy and are somewhat irritable. They believe they are at the pinnacle of achievement. People with this disorder also feel depressed and sometimes have a neutral mood.

·       Bipolar II Disorder:

In this type, people may have other mental problems like anxiety and drug abuse, due to which they show symptoms of depression. Regarding diagnosis, you should have had at least one major depressive episode. Some people may get normal sometimes. People with this disorder first seek treatment due to their first depressive episode.

·       Cyclothymic Disorder:

It is a mild version, where you may feel many mood swings. You may feel depressed and have mania more frequently. People feel emotional ups and downs but they are lower than those of bipolar disorder I and II.

BIPOLAR DISORDER SYMPTOMS:

There are different types of this disorder. In these types of BD, there may be various types of hypomania and depressive episodes. You may show symptoms like changes in mood, behaviour, depression, and difficulty in life.

Symptoms of bipolar I disorder:

Below are the symptoms of this disease: 

Manic episode:

A manic episode is when a person feels highly energetic and irritated most of the day for many days. He may feel changes in behavior, such as:

·       He’s so full of life that he can’t bear to sleep.

·       Rapid-fire speech

·       Fast thoughts and quickly changing the topic when talking 

·       Easily get distracted

·       Highly active

·       Take risks

Your family and friends should understand the change in behaviour. The symptoms may cause dysfunction in friends, work, and family. Going to a hospital for therapy can help ensure your safety. Some people who have manic episodes also experience hallucinations and false beliefs.

Hypomanic episode:

It is less severe than manic episodes that last for four days in a row rather than a week. It does not cause any problems with family, friends or daily functions.

Major depressive disorder:

It is an episode that lasts for two weeks in which you may feel the following symptoms:

·       Melancholy

·       Lose enthusiasm for past hobbies and interests

·       Guilty feeling

·       Tiredness

·       Sleep changes

·       Loss of hunger or feeling hungry

·       Slow speech or movement

·       Low concentration

·       Thoughts like success and death come into the mind

Symptoms of bipolar II disorder:

Symptoms like one major depressive disorder and one hypomanic episode, but you never have a manic episode.     

Symptoms of cyclothymic disorder:

There have been so many depressive or hypomanic symptoms for at least two years. The symptoms, however, don’t meet the criteria for hypomania or depressive episodes.

WHAT CAUSES BIPOLAR DISORDER?

Nobody knows the actual cause of this disorder. However, the following are possible confounding variables:

Biological differences: You may suffer from physical changes in the brain. It can help to pinpoint the cause. The changes in the brain are still unknown.

Genetics: It may be genetic. It can run in families if one or more relatives have BD.

BIPOLAR DISORDER TREATMENT:

First, we will talk about bipolar I disorder. The symptoms of bipolar I disorder improve with treatment. Medicine and talk therapy can help many people know their illness and stick to drugs. A mood stabilizer is a common medicine that is prescribed for BD. These medicines help improve brain signaling. In BD, the mood changes abruptly and repeats; therefore, ongoing preventive treatment is suggested. People with bipolar disorder should try different medicines to find the best one. ECT therapy may be used when medication and psychotherapy do not work. In the case of ECT, an electric current is applied to the scalp while the patient is under anesthesia. A short, controlled seizure is a result of ECT. The brain’s signal pathways are remodeled with the help of ECT.

·       Bipolar II disorder treatment:

This disorder follows the same treatment plan as bipolar I disorder. Antidepressants and mood stabilizers are frequently prescribed medications. In this case, if medicines are not effective, then ECT may be used.

·       Cyclothymic disorder treatment:

It may include medicine and talk therapy. Talk therapy may help people with mood swings. Keeping a journal can be more effective in observing patterns in mood changes.

CONCLUSION:

From the article, as mentioned earlier, we conclude that bipolar disorder is a mental health condition where a person feels changes in his mood, like energy or depression, sometimes. He cannot focus on his work. BD can be hereditary, and that’s why it can be passed on to future generations. Doctors can suggest better treatments, which include medicines and talk therapy. When both therapies don’t work, then ECT is the best way to get rid of this disorder.