Article by Jean Littman

Diagnosing bipolar disorder has always been tricky, particularly for doctors and therapists. If there was a laboratory test or x-ray that could give a definitive bipolar disorder diagnosis, preliminary investigations by doctors would provide a much clearer result.

This lack of quantifiable analysis is part of the reason for the difficulty in determining whether the symptoms indicate mental illness or not. Accurate diagnosis is usually only reached after careful analysis of behaviour, thought patterns and consultation with family and loved ones.

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Article by Julie Frey

Millions of Americans suffer from bipolar disorder. It is a disease that anyone is susceptible to. But, certain groups of people are more susceptible to it than others. For instance, if your parents or grandparents have shown bipolar disorder signs, your chances of contracting the disease is significantly higher that are those whose parents and grandparents have not had the illness. And, the same is true if you have one or more siblings with the disease. In point of fact, heredity is the biggest predictor of all of a person developing the illness.

When determining predictors, an additional one is that of the age of the individual. More often than not, this illness falls upon someone in their late teens. Consequently, pre-teens and older adults, as a group, have a much less chance of getting bipolar disorder.

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Article by Lynn Woods

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive disorder, is characterized by extreme, uncontrollable shifts in mood. Bipolar patients ride an emotional roller coaster between depression and euphoria. Generally, each stage lasts weeks to months, but the severity and frequency of episodes vary from person to person and even in each individual. Patients experience normal moods in between episodes of mood swings.

Symptoms of the depression stage include sadness, guilt, hopelessness, anxiety, sleep disturbances, fatigue, irritability, and loss of interest in normal activities. During the manic stage, the person may feel elated, all powerful, excited and energetic, or appear agitated and irritable. Their thoughts and speech race; they need less sleep, and they exhibit poor judgment. They may engage in reckless and uncharacteristic behavior like hypersexuality, substance abuse, reckless driving, and spending sprees. In extreme cases, sufferers experience psychotic episodes where they experience hallucinations and delusions of grandeur. They may believe they are on a mission or that they are the “chosen one”.

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Article by Robert N. Perry

About one person in 4 in the United States suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder per year. With millions of people being diagnosed, the term “mental disorder” should prompt us to seek out a greater understanding of such disorders. One mental disorder that affects 5.7 million American adults per year is Bipolar Disorder. What is Bipolar Disorder? More importantly, are there any signs to indicate professional advice may be needed?

Bipolar I Disorder is also known as manic-depressive disorder. It is also referred to as bipolar affective order or manic depression. It is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or more depressive episodes.

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Article by Jeff Waplak

Bipolar disorder is a kind of mood disorder and is a combination of psychological and physical features that affect’s human functioning. In the past people referred to bipolardisorder as manic depression. People suffering from bipolardisorder go through mood swings that alternate between two opposite poles such as extreme sadness and euphoric happiness.

<strong>Causes of Bipolar Disorder:</strong>

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Article by Alex Warren

What is Bipolar Disorder? Every one of us can experience the ‘ups and downs’ of everyday life, but for people suffering with bipolar affective disorder these ups and downs are more extreme and prolonged, affecting not only their mood, but their thoughts, behavior and ability to function in life. Thus making them different from others. For us it is just a bad day or experience but for the sufferer it could be a lesion or incident to be remembered. It is a neurological disorder characterized by extreme mood swings. After a brief research it has been concluded that there is no such factor that causes this disorder. Genetic factors, brain chemistry and life incidents contribute in the onset of this disorder. There are almost one in hundred people get affected by this disorder. It mainly starts as a depression in adolescent but it can appear at any age group regardless of gender. It is important to treat this disorder as early as possible to avoid further complications.

Causes of Bipolar Disorder

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Article by Ethan Kalvin

More and more you hear of people having bipolar disorders. For most of us who have never experienced an individual with a bipolar disorder it can be hard to understand. Bipolar individuals have mood swings that can range from ecstatic elation to extremely depressive. Witnesses to this consider their behaviors very erratic and don’t know what to expect when they walk through the door.

Part of the confusion surrounding bipolar disorder has to do with the terminology of mania in the disorder. Mania, in most of the descriptions about bipolar disorder, seems like an up time or a happy time but yet when this mania manifests in the lives of those with bipolar disorder for the most part this is a time of rages, excess, and more wild behaviors and not just an overly happy time as is seen in much of the literature surrounding the disorder.

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