Bipolar Disorder Case Study

Bipolar disorder is one of the oldest known mental illnesses. In early history, bipolar and other mental disorders was viewed with disgust, rather a testimony of ignorance, confusion and fear. People who had bipolar were to be believed to be possessed by a demonic figure, which resulted being restraint, bleeding to death or having electric eels applied to their skull as their treatment. These past actions were observed by a greek physician named Areteaus Cappadocia, he was responsible for the terms “melancholia” and “mania”, which is now known as manic and depressive. Cappadocia had spent most of his life researching on bipolar and other similar disorders such as depression. With his healthy approach towards the mental disorder he had discovered

Technological advancements are improving genetic research, which is crucial for bipolar disorder research. An example of this would be the launch of Bipolar Disorder Phenome Database, which was funded by NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health). This allowed scientists to link visible signs of the disorder with the genes that may influence them. But genes are not the only risk factor, there was a case study on two identical twins, this case study has shown that the twin of a person with bipolar illness does not always develop the disorder, despite they are identical twins with the exact same genes. This suggests that enviromental factors may also be at work here. However researchers still do not fully understand how these factors interact with each other. Bipolar mood changes are called “episodes”, people can experience manic episodes, depressive episodes or “mixed” episodes. A mixed episodes is when a person has an episode with both manic and depressive symptoms. Episodes can last for a week and more, while having the same or similar symptoms. Mood episodes are very intense as they bring out strong feelings and happens along extreme changes in behavior and energy. Manic and depressive episodes have different symptoms. People who experience manic episodes may feel very “up” or”high”, feel “jumpy” or “fidgety”, talk very fast about many things/subjects, be irritable or “touchy”, have trouble with sleeping or relaxing, are more active, and are more likely to do unsafe activities such as spend a lot of money or have reckless intercourse. People who experience depressive episodes may feel “down” or sad, feel worried or empty, have trouble concentrating, forget things a lot, feel tired, lose interest in activities which they used to enjoy, think about death or suicide, have