Bipolar Disorder - Short Presentation :: essays research papers

bipolar Disorder, also known as Manic Depression, involves episodes of mania and depression, with periods of stability. Manic episodes are characterized by elevated energy levels, restlessness, feeling of nonhing can go wrong, and high self-confidence while depressive episodes are the exact opposite menial energy, sluggish, sadness, and feeling of hopelessness. Occasionally, people jumping from Bipolar Disorder can suffer more(prenominal) frightful symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized mentation.Although they do not know the exact cause of Bipolar Disorder, researchers believe that biologic, genetic and environmental factors are all involved in causing and triggering episodes of the malady. Evidence suggests that an asymmetry of neurotransmitters in the brain is the culprit. Episodes can last weeks or months.For two historic period I live with a 16 year-old girl named Nicole who had Bipolar Disorder. I witnessed several episodes ranging from calm to severe. A calm episode would usually inhabit of only the manic stage. She had ab appear 7 calm episodes while she lived with me. In reality, calm episodes are just episodes caught in enough time so that an adjustment of her medication was able to stabilize her.In a more severe episode, Nicole would usually decline mentally over a 7-day period, at which point she would need to be hospitalized. Nicoles behavior during a severe episode included wild mood swings from extreme happiness to animosity to sadness disorganized thinking she was ineffectual to follow conversations, and would make strange statements and cutting depression she tried to kill herself 4 times.Nicoles illness affected her life completely. Having spent her most of her life in and out of hospitals she was unable to attend school on a regular basis. She had hardly a(prenominal) friends because she was embarrassed to tell them about her condition.Nicole eventually left our house during a severe episode. She became pa ranoid that we were trying to control her. She packed all of her crush and left to go live with her mother. We heard that she was hospitalized just 3 days later. She was in the hospital for 5 months, her longest stretch ever. I went and visited her in the hospital several times. I barely recognized her. She was not thinking clearly, delusional, and paranoid. When she was in remission, she was completely normal. Now, she couldnt pay attention, was fidgety, and told me she was hearing voices again.As of October of 2001, Nicole is living in a halfway house because her illness is unable to be kept under control.