As you live, there are times when you come across a person whose mood changes dramatically around you. In the morning, a person who appeared to be in a good mood may complain of depression at night as if it had never happened.
If you repeat these ups and downs it is called manic depression. Since bipolar disorder is associated with emotional disturbances, there is a view that it can be resolved simply by making up your mind, but this is not a primary treatment plan.
How should bipolar disorder be accepted and treated? Professor Park Won-myeong from the Mental Health Department of Yeouido St. Hospital revealed. Mary’s various aspects of bipolar disorder in an interview with Health Chosun.
◇ There is a difference from simple depression
Manic depression is scientifically referred to as bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder refers to a mental disorder in which low or high moods persist for a significant period of time.
Professor Park explained that the symptoms vary from person to person, noting that some people with bipolar disorder develop depression first, while others show mania first.
Common depression is equivalent to ‘unipolar depression’. When the symptoms get worse, only depression falls into unipolar depression, but the depression of bipolar disorder sometimes turns into depression or mania.
Symptoms such as anxiety, nervousness and lack of appetite accompany unipolar depression. However, bipolar depression is characterized by excessive sleeping or eating, which can later lead to mania.
Worsening of normal depression or mania, like unipolar depression, does not lead to bipolar depression. Professor Park added that depression is a disease with great individual differences, so it is possible for depression to recur and later to manifest mania.
◇ It must be distinguished from simple emotional disturbances
Professor Park explained how to differentiate between bipolar disorder and simple mood swings. The part he focused on was ‘length’ and ‘severity’.
If the high mood lasts more than 1 week or if the depression lasts more than 2 weeks, these are important symptoms to suspect bipolar disorder.
Professor Park said, “Even when you feel high for no reason for 2 to 3 days, you should keep a close eye on it because it could be mania that occurs in bipolar disorder.”
He mentioned that bipolar disorder cannot be diagnosed with symptoms of just one or two days, but it can be diagnosed when mania lasts for more than a week and depression lasts for more than two weeks.
◇ Medication is more effective than counselling
The most common treatment for bipolar disorder is medication. Unlike other mental illnesses, bipolar disorder is caused by the secretion of neurotransmitters in the brain, so drug treatment tries to resolve it.
In the case of depression, antidepressants are used to escape depression, and in the case of mania, antimanic drugs are used, but bipolar disorder cannot use only one drug.
Since the main purpose of treatment for bipolar disorder is to control emotions that run to both extremes, mood stabilizers are mainly used for treatment.
Professor Park mentioned that bipolar disorder cannot be treated with psychotherapy alone, such as counselling. Counseling and treatment can be combined, but medication is the first treatment.
He told those who are hesitant about treatment, ‘Just as an antipyretic should be given to a person with a fever to reduce the fever, bipolar disorder must be treated by taking medication.’ Just as a person with a fever should be given antipyretics to reduce the fever, bipolar disorder must be treated with medication.
