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Essay on Bipolarism
Bipolar disorder is characterized by extreme changes in mood, behavior and thought patterns, which occur as distinctive episodes, at regular intervals, throughout the adult lives of afflicted persons. These individuals suffer periods of mania and severe depression, interspersed with periods of relative 'normality' in which the excesses of the manic and depressive periods are fully appreciated, and their return is feared.
During these periods in which they are free of symptoms, bipolar patients are able to describe with great precision the horrors of the disorder. Many of them have written eloquently about the disease, their fears of future episodes, of causing further embarrassment to loved ones, and of passing on the disease to their children.
Manic episodes are characterized by heightened mood, elation, grandiosity, generally a pleasant and good feeling that anything is possible. Speech increases in speed until it becomes incomprehensible. Thoughts race until it is impossible to concentrate on one idea at a time. The individual moves faster and faster, not stopping to eat or to sleep. Finally, irritability sets in, accompanied sometimes by paranoid ideas, and the individual may lose contact with reality. Before medications were available for the treatment of the disorder, individuals were known to die from exhaustion during a manic episode.
In the early 1990s, lifetime prevalence rates for bipolar disorder were estimated to be 1.6 per cent for men and 1.7 per cent for women (Kessler et al., 1994). These figures are slightly higher than what had been found in the early 1980s, that 1.2 per cent of men and women develop bipolar disorder during their lifetime (Weissman et al., 1991). Three studies have shown that the prevalence of bipolar disorder is rising. First, Angst (1985) examined all admissions to the regional psychiatric hospital near Zurich from 1920 to 1980. He found an increase in the rates of mania and depression, with the ratio of mania to depression remaining constant................
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