Bipolar disorder (bipolar affective disorder or manic depression) is a mental disorder that can cause people to have severe mood swings in matter of minutes. A person who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder can be happy one minute, and depressed the next. There are “highs” and “lows” that a person with a bipolar disorder can experience. The “low” is bipolar depression, but when you feel full of energy, you are at a high. You can feel these mood swings only a couple of times a year to several times a week.
If you're lucky the disorder will only last years, but in most cases it lasts a lifetime. Most people who have manic depression illness will receive the disorder in their late teens or early twenties, although there have been …show more content…
Most people who have manic depression illness will receive it in their late teens or early twenties, although there have been cases of children as young as 6 to be diagnosed with it. Young children who are bipolar usually get more irritated than adults and might see and hear things that are not real. Children that go through the depression stage usually complain more about physical symptoms like aches and pains more than being sad or upset. Another big difference between bipolar disorder in kids than adults is that the children's stages are usually a lot faster. Instead of the stages being separated by weeks or months, like adults, they could only be separated by one day. Teenagers are more like adults than young children when it comes to symptoms. Some common symptoms are mood swings, anger, anxiety, agitation, unwanted thoughts, confusion, racing thoughts, fast speaking, weight gain or weight loss, lack of sleep, fatigue, and delusion.
Bipolar 2 is a less-intense version of Manic Disorder. Someone who is affected by bipolar 2 has at least one hypomanic episode and one episode of depression in their life. Hypomania is the state of elevated mood of irritation. Hypomania is much less severe than mania and it doesn’t impact your life as much. The hypomanic episodes that happen when you have bipolar 2 disorder has to last at least four days. Usually depression episodes happen more often and more intense than the hypomanic episodes. Most patients go to a doctor when they’re in the depressive stage so it’s hard for doctors to