Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, one of several emotional disorders whose main symptom is an abnormality of mood and bipolar disorder is not depression. The first step in understanding the iltness. then. is to understand what we mean by the word mood. Perhaps more to the point, I want to talk about what psyrhiratrisrs mean by the word. The dictionary isn't much help here; it defines mood simply as "a conscious state of mind or predominant feeling."'. The 'predominamt feeling" part of this definition begins to capture the psychiatric concept, but mood is much more than just a feeling.
Our mood includes our happiness or sadness, our state of optimism or pessimism, our feelings of contentedness or dissatisfaction with our situation,and even physical feelings such as how fatigued or robust we feel. Mood is like our emotional temperature, a set of feelings that expresses our sense of emotional comfort or discomfort.
When individuals are in a good mood, they are confident and optimistic. relaxed and friendly, patient, interested. content. The word happy captures part of it, but good mood includes a lot more. People in a good mood usu-ally feel energetic and have a sense of physlcal well-being: they sleep soundly and eat heartily. It's easy for them to be sociable and affectionate. The future looks bright and the moment ripe for starting new projects. When we`re in a good mood, the world seems a wonderful place to live in; it feels good to be alive.
When we’re in a low mood,an opposite set of feelings takes over. We tend to turn inward and may seem preoccupied or distracted by our tho ughts.The word sad captures some nf the experience, but lnw mood is a hit more complicated. There may he a sense of emptiness and loss. It`s diflicult to think about the future very rnuch, and when one dues, it’s hard not to be pessimistic or even intimidated by it. We may lose our temper more easily and then feel guilty about having done so. It’s difficult to be affectionate or sociable, so we avoid others and prefer to be alone. Energy is low. Self-doubt
ta kes over; we become preoccupied.worryirlg about how other people see us.
Abnormal Mood
Some of Iife’s more common stresses and the normal human reactions to them are such common experiences that common terms have been coined for some mood changes—and most people recognize these mood changes as quite normal. Moving to a new community where we don’t know anyone often leads to a sense of dislocation and loneliness that we know as home-sickness. an unpleasant experience that may last for days or even weeks and that everyone has probably experienced at one time or another. When someone close to us dies, a profound sense ofsadness and loss occurs that can become temporarily incapacitnting—the deep sorrow that we call bereavement or mourning. At the time of various milestones of personal achievement, we experience changes of rnood in the other direction. On the occasion of a graduation or wedding or the birth of a child. a person can be filled with joy and pride and a sense of limitless optimism that can be nearly overwhelming, We wouldn’t cal! any of these moods “abnormal," even though they may be extreme.
Like many other things we can measure in human beings—body temperature, blood pressure, or hormone levels, for example- a person’s mood state normally varies within acertain ran ge. People are not in the same mood state all the time; it is quite normal for everyone to have ups and downs of mood. Do persons with bipolar disorder simply have higher ups and deeper downs? Well. it’s certainly true that the bipolar patient’s ups and downs are sometimes so far outside the range of normal that it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know that something is very wrong. But to say that persons with bipolar disorder simply have more extreme ups and downs of' mood isn’t quite right. Rather, the symptoms of bipolar disorder seem to be caused by a defect in the brain's regulation of mood.
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