Demystifying Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder can make you feel blessed or cursed. It can boost your moods to exhilarating new highs or dump you in the dungeon of despair. It can also morph, becoming increasingly severe or going dormant for years at time.


Perhaps the most vexing aspect of bipolar disorder is that it manifests itself only through thoughts, emotions, perceptions, speech and behavior. Your doctor cannot perform any medical test that proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have bipolar disorder. Moreover, other medical conditions, such as thyroid malfunction and substance abuse, can produce similar symptoms. And because bipolar disorder expresses itself internally through thoughts, perceptions, and emotions and externally through speech and behaviors, doctors and patients may be tempted to dismiss the illness as a character flaw or personality defect.

Bipolar disorder, however, is a very real physical illness. It just happens to affect the brain-- one of the most complex parts of the human anatomy, one of the most difficult parts to test, and one of the areas most sensitive to emotional trauma and stress.

Source:
Bipolar Disorder
Candida Fink, MD
Joseph Kraynak