There are some people who for a period of time will be depressed, unhappy, have no sense of happiness, have a loss or lack of interest, have a sad face, feel that life is meaningless, move slowly, are unwilling to interact with others and avoid society, etc. After a period of time, the person will become in high spirits, optimistic and enthusiastic, talk a lot when excited, talk incessantly, have more activities, and be busy all day long, etc. These two conditions recur repeatedly, causing great distress to patients. In fact, they suffer from a disease called bipolar disorder.
Characteristics of bipolar disorder:
It has the characteristics of high incidence rate, high recurrence rate, high disability rate, high mortality rate, and high comorbidity rate. The disease has a serious impact on the patient’s marriage, children, career and many other aspects. Among people aged 15 to 44 years old, , bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability worldwide. The disease has a high clinical misdiagnosis rate, low recognition rate, high risk of suicide, and low complete cure rate. Many patients and their families are troubled.
What is bipolar disorder?
Bipolar disorder refers to a group of illnesses characterized by significant and lasting changes in emotion or mood, commonly known as manic-depressive disorder. A mood disorder that includes both manic or hypomanic episodes and depressive episodes.
It generally follows an episodic course, with depression and mania often recurring or alternating, or in a mixed manner, and symptoms can be completely relieved between episodes. When the disease attacks, the patient’s daily life, work, and study will be adversely affected. A patient’s first seizure is usually due to a stressful life event.
Risk factors for the onset of bipolar disorder
The pathogenesis of bipolar disorder
The pathogenesis of bipolar disorder is still unclear, but it is currently believed to be the result of a combination of genetic, neurobiochemical, neuroendocrine, neuroimmune, and psychosocial factors.
Genetic factors
The survey found that the disease has obvious familial aggregation, and its genetic tendency is more prominent than schizophrenia, depression, etc., with a heritability as high as 85%. If one parent has bipolar disorder type I, their children will suffer from bipolar disorder. The probability is about 25%. If both parents have bipolar disorder type I, the probability of their children suffering from bipolar disorder is 50%-75%.
Psychosocial factors
Adverse life events and environmental stress events can induce the onset of emotional disorders, such as unemployment, broken love, poor family relationships, and long-term highly stressful living conditions. Genetic factors may become a susceptibility quality in the onset of affective disorders, and people with this susceptibility quality are triggered by certain environmental factors to develop the disease.
Treatment of Bipolar Disorder
To improve the recognition rate, the participation of family members is also required
The average delay from onset to accurate diagnosis of bipolar disorder is 5-10 years. More than one-third of patients are diagnosed with bipolar disorder at least 10 years or more ago, and 60% of them have been misdiagnosed as depression.
The main reason for the high misdiagnosis rate and low identification rate is that hypomania is difficult to identify. Hypomanic states are often experienced by patients as depressive relief or as a happy emotional experience with a relatively short duration and self-coordination. Mood state, so patients with hypomania rarely report this situation spontaneously, so careful observation by family members is very important at this time.
Watch out for these five signs!
Easily irritable
Patients are prone to strong emotional reactions to small things. For example, anger, agitation, anger, and even tantrums generally last for a short time.
Forced crying and laughing
Without the influence of any external factors, the patient suddenly appears uncontrollable and without the slightest contagious facial expression. The patient has neither any inner experience of this, nor can he explain why he should cry and laugh like this. This is a more common mental symptom when the brain is organic.
Emotional vulnerability
Patients often feel sad or excited because of some small or insignificant things, and they cannot restrain themselves.
Pathological passion
It refers to a sudden, very strong but short-lived emotional disorder. The difference between it and emotional outburst is that it manifests as impulsive, hurting people, destroying things and other highly destructive behaviors, and most of them have a certain degree of disturbance of consciousness, which is forgotten afterwards.
Other symptoms
It is often accompanied by symptoms of difficulty in thinking, lack of decision, lack of interest, headache, sleep disturbance, and lack of energy. In severe cases, there may be movement retardation, agitation, hypochondriac or persecutory delusions, anorexia, and insomnia.
