Before our discussion of bipolar disease in class I always imagined people who would seem fine one second and then have a huge, angry outburst. I genuinely believed that the emotions of people with bipolar could turn on a dime. I was once again proven to be wrong.
Bipolar disease is long periods of depression followed by long periods of mania or hypomania (an emotional state in which the subject is extremely happy but not manic). Hypomania is more difficult to diagnose because it seems more like a peppy personality than a chemical imbalance. The exact pathway causing this imbalance is not known which makes you start to wonder how exactly medications are made and prescribed for this disease.
The most common method of prescription for bipolar is called rational pharmacy. Basically what this means is the doctor will prescribe the patient a drug depending on the symptoms they are experiencing at the time. If the patient is exhibiting depressive behavior they are prescribed an antidepressant and vice versa. There are very few drugs that are very effective for the manic stages of bipolar so it is the depression that is primarily treated in most patients anyway. This method often requires trial and error which can cause patients to be without proper medication until the correct mix of medications is found.
I find this fact to be a rather unfortunate one, but despite not having any idea what the cause of the disease is or how exactly to treat it there are many people who are very well known and constantly in the public eye who deal with bipolar without letting on that they have it. Some of these people include Russell Brand, Robert Downey Jr., Mel Gibson, Amy Winehouse, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Bipolar: You may not have even known.
