Gossip magazines have a particularly nice time often speculating about which celebrity might have symptoms of bipolar disorder. Britney Spears shaves her head, and right away, the magazine’s psychologists go to town and speculate on what they think she might have. Every time something happens with a celebrity, everyone jumps into action. They do it because the general public likes to stereotype what happens when people have a mental illness. Of course, the reality of a mental illness such as a mood disorder is not simple enough to be stereotyped. Bipolar disorder, especially, can be incredibly difficult to diagnose or define. If you are really wondering how you can tell if someone has bipolar, the following symptoms are the ones to watch for.
The most important symptoms of bipolar disorder have to do with having episodes in which one is up or down in turn. During an upswing, a manic patient can be extremely happy, extremely energetic, and seem a little out of it. In some people, the manic phase is so high that it leads to a state called hypomania; that’s when they become so hyper that they completely lose touch with reality and act crazy. If that sounds like a painful state, it’s actually not true. People in this state can be really happy. If you are an artist, you can experience some of your best creative moments during periods like these, like Van Gogh for example.
And then there’s the other side, when they really lose their exuberance and sink into a black hole of depression. What does it feel like to be depressed when you’re bipolar? You generally feel the same as anyone with regular depression. You know that a depressed person is experiencing the other side of bipolarity, when regular antidepressants do nothing for them. If anything, antidepressants make them rock from side to side more often, or make them disconnect from reality altogether. So, there is mania and depression. Do these symptoms of bipolar disorder always occur one after another? There comes a time in the lives of many bipolar patients when, disconcertingly, they are able to experience both states at the same time. They look a little cranky when they’re like this. Since they don’t appear to be terribly elated or terribly depressed when both symptoms collide head-on at the same time, it can be hard to tell that such a person is bipolar. They just come across as someone who has a bad temper in general.
For the next one, you’ll probably have to know the patient pretty well. The most striking part of all the symptoms of bipolar disorder is the inability of these people to complete everything they start. Go home and you will find that they have been extremely productive in starting new projects. Somehow, though, they find it hard to get attached to anything. His whole life is a catalog of great works, all half done. It is in their nature to want to keep moving forward towards something new.
And then, of course, there are the usual problems that people with any type of mental disorder tend to have: problems with drugs and alcohol, and an inability to perform reasonably well at work or school. None of these symptoms can actually signal bipolar by itself. If you know someone who has any of these symptoms, you’ll probably have to dig deeper to find out how many of them they have.
