What is Bipolar Disorder?
Bipolar disorder is a mental illness that effects the constant change in mood, energy, activity level, and the ability to carry out day to day task. This is an illness just as serious as high blood pressure or diabetes; they all need to be monitored and be cared for on the regular basis. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, this disability normally starts in a person’s late teen years or early adult years and is hard to recognize its presents. Normally people just think too many things are going on at once and cannot handle it all. When this starts it doesn’t stop. It is a life long illness that must be maintained throughout one’s life span. Bipolar disorder leads on to other illnesses eventually if not cared for such as depression; being that it is also called manic-depressive illness.
Symptoms
People with this illness have very unusual experiences within themselves and start to notice change. According to NIH this manic-depressive illness can make a person very low or very high. The high point can make a person function with a lot of energy without reasoning. Just like Susan D from the Journal of Family Practices, she normally needs 7 to 8 hours of sleep in order to function but be able to function on 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Every once in a while she would get this excessive amount of energy and perform huge tasks like cleaning out her garage alone. This is an example of a manic episode. Just as if someone is very tired and they start to play a lot and get very goofy. Also her moods would very throughout the day and she would be sad and low functioning but unable to pin point the reason why she can’t get out of that low point. The low point of bipolar disorder is depression; with depression comes along weight gain, cravings, and also lost of friendships. At times these two opposite phases will mix and you perform happily but actually feel sad this sad feeling is uncontrollable and it’s just full of everything you think of negatively.
Susan explained how along with her depressed mood she also had: sleeplessness, hopelessness, and racing thoughts. Imagine yourself being tired with a full night of rest then also having daily goals to accomplish but wouldn’t be able to because your too over whelmed and you don’t think you can last much longer. As the day goes by and you being over whelmed; you can’t stop thinking about other issues going on at home, in the world, and at work, while you’re in class trying to take a test. It seems to be a nonstop stress. That might be the reason some people end up committing suicide. Susan and many other people have had to deal with these type of symptoms for a long time. People that question