Similarities and Differences between Bipolar Disorder and Depression
When many people hear the name bipolar disorder, they usually assume depression or sometimes schizophrenia. In fact, until the 20th century, even the psychiatrists had hard time discerning between these mental illnesses. In some cases, due to the wrong treatment of the bipolar disorder, this caused a lot of problems and sometimes made the condition worse.
In order to maximize the treatment’s effectiveness, it is essential for the patient as well as his or her doctor to make the correct diagnosis. In regular depression, the person afflicted will be generally withdrawn and he or she will not spend so much time and energy on anything. Their eating patterns, sleeping patterns and even sexual patterns will be curbed and they will generally want to stay away from any stimuli. The person will show general signs of depression in concordance with the criteria in the Hamilton scale.
However, in bipolar disorder, the bipolar symptoms are a bit different then depression. Although the same depression symptoms may also be seen; in addition, the patient will also exhibit a manic phase in which he will become over active. While the patient may seen to be extremely depressive one day, he or she may become extremely active, energetic and flamboyant the next day.
In fact, some people would mistake this for a recovery, but it would actually be signaling a serious degradation of the person’s condition. Hence, the presence of constant mood swings can be an important way to diagnose bipolar disorder, so that the necessary bipolar treatment can be carried out.
