The Diagnosis and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder Versus Unipolar Depress

The Diagnosis and Treatment of bipolar Disorder Versus Unipolar DepressionBipolar disorder is a serious mental disorder, but unfortunately our collective knowledge of this mental illness is not extensive. Unlike depression, where patients are strictly glum and deeply blue, the bipolar patient experiences that same depression only flanked by extreme highsa hyperactivity and increase in serotonin. It is this inconsistency in mooda clinical mood swinging, that makes bipolar disorder so difficult to diagnose. Difficulty, as forget be discussed in the paper, comes from patients inability to recognize these highs as potentially troublesome, and sooner opt to focus only on the depressed moods that follow. Conventional thought, after all, is not to worry or see a doctor should one on the spur of the moment have increased energy and enthusiasm. The result is a overwhelming understanding of other illnesses, but significantly less of bipolar, especially of these highs, or hypomanic episodes patients feel. This paper will first discuss bipolar disorder, its symptoms and prognosis. The errors in diagnosing bipolar disorder and how this leads to confusion surrounding treatments will also be discussed. An investigation in to the diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder will reveal a strong inconsistency in treatment stemming from lack of conclusive knowledge about the disorder. go many doctors suggest antidepressant use, while others will utilize lithium, and mood stabilizers, and in fact this range of treatments is in fact responsible for the lack of holistic understanding of the disorder as a chemo-physiological disease, but also as a separate entity from traditional, or what is often referred to as unipolar depression.According to the Americ... ... 11-20Nemeroff CB, Evans DL et. al. (2001). Double-blind, placebo-controlled comparison of imipramine and paroxetine in the treatment of bipolar depression. American ledger of Psychiatry 158(6), 906-912Post RM, Altshule r LL, Frye MA et al. (2001). Rate of switch in bipolar patients prospectively tough with second-generation antidepressants as augmentation to mood stabilizers. Bipolar Disorders, 3(5), 259-265.Post RM and Denicoff KD. (2003). Morbidity in 258 bipolar outpatients followed for 1 year with daily prospective ratings on the NIMH life chart method. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 64, 680-690Rihmer Z. and Pestality P. (1999). Psychiatric Clinician of North America, 22, 667-673.Silverstone T (2001). Moclobemide vs. imipramine in bipolar depression a multicentre double-blind clinical trial. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 104(2), 104-109.