Question:
I have had the depression thing for a while now but Ive not
heard of "Bipolar disorder", I think maybe it's an American thing, could
anybody explain please?
Answer:
It was formally known as "manic depression" Bipolar disorder is the official medical term for manic depression. I don't
believe it's exclusively a U.S. term, considering the conversations I have
with persons outside of North America, including folks in your own beloved U.K. There are two versions of the illness. Bipolar I means that when the patient
experiences mania, he/she exhibits psychotic symptoms, including
hallucinations and delusional thinking. Bipolar II is referred to as
hypomania, in which the patient suffers mania but not so severly as to
escalate into psychosis. In both cases, if left untreated, the manic phase
will ordinarily give way to clinical depression. Bipolar disorder is the "soft" way to call the manic-depressive disorder.
That is to mean: if you call a person: "manic-depressive" you are mentioning
something which sounds too clinical and "serious". So, doctors prefer to
call you: "bipolar". And people who suffer from this disorder go through
alternate depressive and manic episodes. The frequency of the cycles gives a
more tuned classification. For example: there are the bipolar type II, who
tend to remain in one of the poles, be it mania or depression. Or there is
also the "ciclothimia" which is a bipolar disorder in which the sufferer
changes rapidly from one state to the other. Whether the term "bipolar" is
American or not, I do not know, but everywhere I have looked I have found
the same terminology. I am bipolar type II.
