Bipolar Disorder: Types and Symptoms

Bipolar disorder is a disorder in your brain that causes shifts in energy, activity levels, and mood. This disorder can affect how you do your daily activities. For example, it can make you do your daily activities very slowly and without care and other days it can make you do things at your regular speed and with care. Bipolar disorder can also make you very depressed one day and make you less depressed another day. Some people may not know that they have bipolar disorder and even though other people may tell them they have it they would ignore the other person and still think they don’t have it.

There are four different and rudimentary types of bipolar disorder. The four different and basic types of bipolar disorder are Bipolar I Disorder, Bipolar II Disorder, Cyclothymic Disorder (also known as cyclothymia), and other specified and unspecified Bipolar and Related Disorders.

People with Bipolar I Disorder will have either manic episodes that happen for seven days or more or manic symptoms when you have this depressive episode may also occur for two or more weeks, another thing that may occur when you have this is manic symptoms and depression occurring both at the same time. People with Bipolar II Disorder will have depressive and hypomanic episodes occurring, but it won’t have the same manic episodes as the people with Bipolar II Disorder. Also, people with Cyclothymic disorder will have a lot of periods of hypomanic symptoms and a lot of periods of depressive symptoms that happen for two or more years, but usually it would only happen for one year for adolescents and children, but these symptoms are not the same as requirements for a depressive episode and a hypomanic episode. Another thing is that people with other specified and unspecified Bipolar and Related Disorders will have Bipolar Disorder symptoms that are not the same as Bipolar I Disorder, Bipolar II Disorder, or Cyclothymic disorder. All these types of Bipolar Disorder may be similar but overall, they are all different.

When people have Bipolar Disorder they can have manic episodes occurring or depressive episodes happening, but they may also have manic episodes and depressive episodes also occurring at the same time. When people have Bipolar Disorder and depressive episodes happening they can be feeling very hopeless, down, sad, or empty, and/ or they can have decreased sleep, or too much sleep, which can cause them to have problems when they are sleeping. People with a depressive episode can also have problems when they are trying to concentrate, they can be feeling slowed down, or feel very tired, they can eat too much or eat way too little, they can be with almost no energy, they can be with lowered activity levels, they can forget many factors and events, they can have a feeling of anxiety or emptiness, they can feel like as if they can’t delight in anything, and they can even have thoughts about suicide or thoughts about death. When people have Bipolar Disorder and manic episodes going on they can do risky things, like for example having a lot of money spent, they can also have a feeling of being elated, being very up, or being very high, another thing is that they can have a belief that they are able to be doing many things at one time. People with a manic episode can also be full of energy, they can have a feeling like as if their thoughts and what they think is going too rapid, they can have amplified activity levels, they can be irritable, touchy or be agitated, they can feel wired or they can feel jumpy, they can be more energetic than how they normally are, they can have problems sleeping, and they may even talk about many different things very quickly.

These are the symptoms that you can have separately or some of them can even occur at the same time. The health of people with Bipolar Disorder may even be affected by them having psychotic symptoms, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and they may also do substance abuse. When people have psychotic symptoms, because of severe and serious episodes of depression or mania, they can develop delusions or hallucinations, the kind of symptoms they’ll have will match the mood of the person. Some people who have Bipolar Disorder are also known to also have anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, this is also known as ADHD. People who are diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder can also not properly use drugs or alcohol which causes them to have problems with their relationships, or do bad at their job or in school. Psychotic symptoms, ADHD and anxiety, and substance abuse are just a few things that people can have but there still is more things the person can have or develop when having Bipolar Disorder.

Bipolar Disorder is a serious matter that cannot be cured by medicine, but medicine can still help you control some things. Bipolar Disorder can also be dangerous for some people and it is important to know about it because of all of its dangerous effects that has a possibility of going on. There can be not just one factor, but many factors that can cause Bipolar Disorder to happen, the factors that can probably cause Bipolar Disorder to happen is if someone in your family has had it before, it can be because of your genes, but it may also be because of your brain structures and how it functions. But fortunately studies on the brain structures of people who have Bipolar Disorder compared to people who don’t have Bipolar Disorder, including the brain of both healthy people and people who have other types of disorders in their brain, will allow scientist to make further research on Bipolar Disorder so they can find what types of medicine will have the greatest effect to make the Bipolar Disorder less severe. This is a good thing because it could make advancements in the types of Bipolar Disorder treatments, which can possibly lead to a medicine that can treat the majority part of the Bipolar Disorder.

Overall, there are many types of Bipolar Disorders that have diverse symptoms which do distinctive things and are caused by different factors but hopefully scientist will figure out a medicine that will treat most of the Bipolar Disorder.