Roller Coaster From Hell

3. Changes in Behavior: Increased activity and socialization, immersion in plans and projects, talking rapidly and much more than usual, excessive spending, impaired judgement, impulsive sexual involvement.

4. Changes in Physical Self: reduced need for sleep, increased energy and stamina, fewer health complains.

Nine out of ten bipolars experience both mania and major depression,

CYCLES OF BIPOLAR DISORDER

The cycles of the disorder vary. The periods between episodes, depression, and mania or hyomania may become shorter or longer.

Most people with bipolar have periods of normal moods between episodes. Rapid cycling (which occurs in more women than men) consists of four or more manic or depressive episodes in a year, lasting for at least 24 hours and ending with a switch to the opposite psychological state.

Ultra rapid cycling and even ultra ultra cycling have been indentified where moods may change daily or within a day. Some bipolars cycle continuously with rarely a nornal mood achievement.

Bipolar Affective Illness can follow a seasonal path with individuals sinking into depression at certain times of the year then swinging into manic or hypomania a few months later.

TYPES OF BIPOLAR AFFECTIVE DISORDER

Bipolar 1: Always includes at least one episode of mania or mixed episode. Alternating periods of severe mania and depression often requiring hospitalization.

Bipolar 2: Severe depression alternating with hypomania (milder tha mania)

Biopolar 3: Cyclothymia: Milder depression and hypomania

HOW MANY BIPOLARS ARE THERE?

Approx one in one hundred people develop a bipolar disorder. Two million american adults are bipolar.

AN INTERSETING NOTE ON CREATIVITY

Bipolar disorders hve long been linked with creativity, The artist Vincent Van Gogh, composers Robert Schumann and George Frederich Handl, poets Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, and writers Virginia Woof and Ernest Hemingway all suffered from "this brilliant madness". In all of my years of meeting with bipolars there is not one that I can think of who does not express creativity in one form or another. As an example I point you again to A BIPOLAR EXPRESSION.

COMING UP!!

The next article will be a continuation of this one and will discuss how you can tell if yours is a hypomania or manic episode, the causes of bipolar disorder, risks, complications, outlook and treatment.

Hope to see you again Sept 22 1998.

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