In Bipolar II Disorder there are episodes of depression and hypomania, usually defined as rapid mood cycling. There are no hallucinating or psychotic episodes with this disorder. Hypomania is a milder form of mania, where there are periods of elation or they experience a sense of heightened happiness. With Bipolar II, patients have depression which is more harsher than in Bipolar so they may have thoughts of suicide, or come out with suicide threats or even attempt suicide. Suicidal thoughts occur more in patients with Bipolar II than in Bipolar I.

A patient is usually diagnosed as having Bipolor II after they had one or more long depressive episode, with usually one episode of hypomania, but no manic or mixed episodes; and also When the symptoms have no other cause.

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I have been diagnosed bipolar in the past, but it is always after less than a hour of the doctor meeting me… more like 15 minutes. I do not feel that the bipolar diagnosis is a properly fitting diagnosis for my situation.
Isn’t there more involved when making a diagnosis, rather than 15 minutes?
“I have been diagnosed bipolar in the past, but it is always after less than a hour of the doctor meeting me… more like 15 minutes. I do not feel that the bipolar diagnosis is a properly fitting diagnosis for my situation.
Isn’t there more involved when making a diagnosis, rather than 15 minutes?”

I am adding some details – not sure if it was going to erase my original details. Sorry if this repeats itself….
I have seen one psychologists before that diagnosed me, after several weeks of talking to her, with long term mild depression.
The reason why I do not feel bipolar is a proper diagnosis is because my only “swings” are into a depressed state.

effect ones ability to complete a college degree?
How do these conditions effect ones ability to complete a college degree? I have started and stopped 3 times,possibly because I doubt myself also anxiety and unable to determine a course of study?

The psychiatrist says the person has Bipolar Disorder but the psychologist says this is a working diagnosis and nothing is set in stone. What does this mean?

Follow up to my prev. qstn: The drug use is in my health record and i was in a residential treatment center for 5 months. Also am on meds for bipolar but I personally believe all of the prior diagnosis was not because I have the disorder but because I was heavily into drugs. I have been clean and sober for the past year and have not exhibited any of the bipolar symptoms that I had before. Will the military summon all my health records? Also my step dad is a Marine Col. – will it help if I joined the Marines instead of the Army?

Living with a bipolar disorder diagnosis isn’t easy. However, knowing, as they say, is half the battle. Once a diagnosis is established, a person has two main choices right off. They are whether to let the disorder take control of one’s life, or to fight it with every weapon in the modern psychiatric and psychological arsenal.

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Currently, there is no laboratory or medical test that would give a straightforward conclusion that a person is suffering from bipolar disorder. This makes it difficult to determine if the symptoms (associated with bipolar disorder) that are present to him or her are indeed signs of this mental illness. Meanwhile, it is very important to detect whether or not this person really has bipolar disorder to provide the right treatment.

Furthermore, the symptoms that could be clear indications of bipolar disorder can be related to other identifiable physical or psychological illness. This makes it more difficult to give treatment since the focus is to give relief to the existing physical pain; rather than identifying if the patient is suffering from any psychological problem. And to complicate these things even further, a person who shows physical signs of bipolar disorder goes to medical doctors rather than a psychiatrist.

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It is difficult to detect Bipolar disorder. Some people are diagnosed after having the disorder for more than ten years. The dual nature of the disorder is the reason for this delay. When a person is feeling manic or hypo manic, he feels good and is energetic. Only when he falls into a major depression he seeks treatment.

So when he visits the doctor and describes his symptoms they are only the depressive symptoms. As a result, the doctor commonly diagnoses him with depression instead of bipolar disorder. This mistake occurs frequently, also because bipolar disorder shares common symptoms with psychiatric illnesses like anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. This leads to a complication in the diagnosis.

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I think i may have bipolar 2, the less severe one. Doctors seem hesitant to give people an official diagnosis. Feeling a little paranoid, wondering if having that on my record could cause me problems. I did notice that the disability plan at work has an exclusion for bipolar dementia. Wondering if that means they exclude bipolar in general. Not that i’m planning to go on disability, just intermittent fmla. Should i stick with my current diagnosis of GAD and Depression?
how do i go about getting meds for the mood swings without diagnosis though. right now i am only on lexapro and xanax. i would like to try something like seroquel. thanks everybody for your input.

uals with a family history of bipolar disorder and advise him or her to undergo necessary clinical tests to verify the condition existing, in order to control and treat it properly. This is very important for helping the person lead a happy, normal and healthy life.

Since bipolar disorder is chiefly linked to genetic causes, if an individual has other persons in the family diagnosed with the condition and exhibits certain common symptoms and signs associated with the disease, it is necessary to observe and report these findings, such as frequent, uncontrollable mood swings, loss of speech control, lack of fine motor skills and emotional upswings and downswings both that are not in the normal range. This means being happy one minute and then extraordinarily and uncontrollably depressed and then back to happy again; it can last a few minutes or a full month; thus, with bipolar disorder, mood swings are a constant and can affect daily routine activities adversely.

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