In spite of modern therapeutic techniques, bipolar disorder is still greatly under diagnosed. One of the main reasons is simply that few people are really familiar with the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Bipolar depression is not like normal depression, and mania is not the same as paranoia. Sure, being manic can make you feel paranoid and anxious, and sometimes people diagnose anxiety panic disorder accidentally. In reality, however, there are many ways to tell the symptoms of bipolar disorder apart from these other conditions.
One of the main ways to tell it has to do with the degree. The symptoms of bipolar disorder can be either mania or depression, but either way they are extremely intense. A bipolar depression is not just like a normal attack of depression. It hits suddenly and intensely, causing the victim to be overcome by intense feelings of despair. Similarly, bipolar mania often lends itself to psychosis. Manics can have delusions, become violent or agitated, lose control of their impulses, and in general act extremely over the top. Although the symptom of bipolar disorder can change based on the person and the particular type of disorder they have, you can always expect it to be extreme and, occasionally, psychotic.
When you are looking for the symptoms of bipolar disorder, you have to look at everything as a whole. Once you have seen some cases of mania, you can see the way the symptoms cluster. Delusions of grandeur, paranoia, impulsivity, and a lack of sleep altogether are clearly the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Although any one of them could indicate a different condition, when you look at the whole picture you can clearly tell the patient is manic depressive.
Things have gotten a lot better in recent years. Only a few years ago, your typical general practitioner had no idea about the symptoms of bipolar disorder. That meant that bipolar patients would often be misdiagnosed and not receive proper psychiatric treatment. Nowadays, this rarely if ever happens. In any case, even if the doctor doesn't immediately know what the diseases, patients are more likely to get psychiatric care and an evaluation to help them out. It is an eminently treatable condition, so the key is to make sure that the patients get the treatment they need as soon as possible. They won't continue to degrade, but they can get themselves into trouble. Their impulsivity and poor at decision-making abilities can often lead to tragic or disastrous results if left untreated. With proper treatment and care, however, they usually turn out okay. Lithium and other drugs for bipolar depression are very good at doing what they're supposed to. More often than not, they level the mood and the patient get on with his or her life.
1:24 AM