Bipolar spectrum

What is bipolar, exactly? Symptoms that may overlap between bipolar spectrum conditions and bipolar disorder include: Depression with very sudden or frequent mood swings (seen in many mental conditions). Prolonged irritability (which may be more common in mania than depression). Impulsivity (common during manic episodes). Bipolar disorder is a spectrum disorder.

It involves extremes of mood shifts and a range of other symptoms that affect people in different ways and to varying degrees.

The elevated mood is significant and is known as mania, or hypomania if less severe and symptoms of psychosis are absent. According to Dr Elizabeth Brondolo and Dr Xavier Amador, the bipolar spectrum disorders are: “a group of disorders all of which involve cycling moods. It does not provide a “yes” or “no” answer to whether or not a patient has bipolar disorder – it addresses the concept of bipolar spectrum.

Before you start this test, you should know that it will not give you a “yes or no” answer. Mood problems fall on a spectrum from plain depression to “bipolar”. One hand is unipolar (depression).

The other hand is bipolar I (manic depression). Unfortunately, the spectrum is wide and unique to each person. You can also think of the bipolar spectrum as a hill, with unipolar (depression) at the bottom and bipolar (manic depression) at the top.

Labeling such behaviors as bipolar spectrum suggests that the brains of affected people have a milder form of the pathology that exists in the brains of persons with major bipolar disorder. Bottom line: The “ bipolar spectrum ” view used to be regarded as a radical idea. It goes against the official diagnostic rule book (the DSM). But the bipolar spectrum idea not radical anymore. It’s practically mainstream now.

Both ways of looking at diagnosis (spectrum and DSM) have value. The two-dimensional bipolar spectrum described here comprises a continuum of severity from normal to psychotic and a continuum from depression, via three bipolar subgroups to mania. This combination of dimensional and categorical principles for classifying mood disorders may help alleviate the problems of underdiagnosis and undertreatment of bipolar disorders. When you become depresse you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities.

When your quiz is score one of different information pages will appear to describe the for scores in your range. This article aims at helping you understand the types of bipolar spectrum disorder. The Broad Media provide you symptom of BSD how it can be treated. The bipolar spectrum is seen relatively often in headache patients, particularly among migraineurs.

The depression and hypomania of the bipolar spectrum complicate treatment in RCM patients, and this must be recognized. The clinical spectrum of bipolar is an evolving concept: mania is better recognized than is hypomania with milder bipolar features (Figure 1). In the initial validation study of the BSDS, the sensitivity of the scale was approximately equal for bipolar I disorder () and bipolar II ⁄ NOS (). The overall sensitivity for bipolar types I, II, NOS: and a overall specificity of. You must print this page out in order to fill in the blanks.

Because bipolar spectrum disorder commonly coexists with other illnesses, it is likely underrecognize and therefore, undertreated.

We need better screening tools and procedures for identifying bipolar spectrum disorder, and work with clinicians to help them better spot these bipolar symptoms,” concluded Dr. A patient with bipolar disorder is dressed in a red leotard and brightly colored scarves. Then the patient says gaily, Do you like my scarves? Failure to diagnose correctly does not just mean the tragic consequences of missing out on treatment – frequently it leads to people receiving drugs that actually trigger mania and makes the disorder worse.

This is very unfortunate and dangerous.