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What´s a Bipolar Disorder?

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Bipolar disorder is generally a term that society and the media have stigmatized as something horrid. A mental illness that has labeled the individual as crazy due to the extreme pendulum of mood swings. Where we know the individual diagnosed with the disorder is usually happy, sad, irritated, and depressed all in a short period of time. Often times when typically functioning people cringe at the idea of having the mental illness. For myself, I would have to honestly state that I was once one of those individuals. Most in part due to my lack of education on the matter, using the term to describe any and everything that had an extreme shift in mood, action, feeling, or thought. Until I finally reached a breaking point in my life where I …show more content…

Thankfully, in my situation everything was due to the amount of stress I was under and the lack of sleep I was getting but it has always made me concerned about my mother. The fact that I often times see her silently suffering. In this paper I would like to define and explore the mental illness of bipolar disorder. What is it? How does it affect individuals diagnosed and what is know in the research about the disorder? What is bipolar disorder? The starting point, as stated by Chaemi (2013) to understanding the self in bipolar disorder is to accept, first of all that bipolar disorder is a disease, a pathology of the body producing psychological symptoms. Bipolar disorder is not the disease of having mania or depression. And those states are, by definition episodes that come and go; they do not stay. They are not constant. It is the disease of being susceptible to having mania or depression. Bipolar disorder is usually categorized with extreme moods swings and changes in activity and energy levels. The onset of the first episode may be either mania or depression. For individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder it is often said that they are on a rollercoaster ride of emotions with mood swings ranging from the highest mountains of elation to the lowest valleys of depression. Some people also experience mixed state of both extremes, with periods of both mania and depression.

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