What is bipolar disorder?
Bipolar disorder is a mental health problem that mainly affects your mood. If you have bipolar disorder, you are likely to have times where you experience:
- manic or hypomanic episodes (feeling high)
- depressive episodes (feeling low)
- potentially some psychotic symptoms during manic or depressed episodes
You might hear these different experiences referred to as mood states, and you can read more about them in our page on bipolar moods and symptoms.
Everyone has variations in their mood, but in bipolar disorder these changes can be very distressing and have a big impact on your life. You may feel that your high and low moods are extreme, and that swings in your mood are overwhelming.
Depending on the way you experience these mood states, and how severely they affect you, your doctor may diagnose you with a particular type of bipolar disorder.
“It’s an emotional amplifier: when my mood is high I feel far quicker, funnier, smarter and livelier than anyone; when my mood is low I take on the suffering of the whole world.”
Bipolar disorder or manic depression?
The term ‘bipolar’ refers to the way your mood can change between two very different states – mania and depression. In the past, bipolar disorder was referred to as manic depression, so you might still hear people use this term. Some health care professionals may also use the term bipolar affective disorder (‘affective’ means the disorder relates to mood or emotions).
What’s it like living with bipolar disorder?
You can watch Laura, Steve and Joe talk about their experiences of living with bipolar disorder in this video. https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cXOImAaAFj8?feature=oembed&rel=0
Siobhan’s story
You can also listen to Siobhan talking about her experiences of bipolar disorder in this podcast.
