Bipolar Disorder & Depression

In order to identify the brain changes associated with bipolar disorder, researchers have used neuroimaging techniques to focus on several interrelated disorder, what are the changes and where do they occur, are these changes unique to bipolar disorder or they overlap with those reported other neuropsychiatric illness, how do the brain changes integrate with neurocognitive, neurogenetic, and neuropathologic data in the same patients?

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Bipolar disorder is highly heritable, so having a family member with the condition increases the risks greatly. Researchers suggest that environmental factors and psychological factors arecan trigger the manic or depressive illness.

Risk Factors:

1. Individual having relative in nuclear family with bipolar disorder, then they may be at higher risk of mood disorder. One analysis of literature shows that children of parent with severe mental illness had roughly a one-third chance to develop mental illness by adulthood. Researchers also found that the earlier age your parent is diagnosed with the disorder, the higher your risk is for also developing it.
2. Individual who experience traumatic events are having higher risk to develop bipolar disorder. Childhood factors like physical or sexual abuse, negligence. Stressful events like losing a job, experience a death in the family can trigger the mice or depressive episodes
3. Individual who abuses drugs or alcohol are also at risk for developing bipolar disorder. Substance use does not cause bipolar disorder but it triggers mood episodes.  As substance abuse can trigger psychosis, individual may have to detox from substances before a doctor can give them a diagnosis of bipolar disorder

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Bipolar disorder varies in different range in different people and the concerned symptoms are also varying widely in their pattern, severity and frequency. While some individual experience to mania or depression while others experience between the two types of episodes. Some of them have frequent mood disruptions while others experience over a lifetime. There are 4 different types of mood episodes: mania, hypomania, depression and mixed episodes. Each type of bipolar disorder mood episodes has a unique set of symptoms.

Common signs and symptoms if mania include

• Feeling unusually high, optimistic or extremely irritable
• Unrealistic beliefs about one’s abilities or powers
• Sleeping very little, but feeling extremely energetic
• Talking so rapidly that others can’t keep up
• Racing thoughts; jumping quickly from one idea to the next
• Highly distractible, unable to concentrate
• Impaired judgment and impulsiveness
• Acting recklessly without thinking about the consequences
• Delusions and hallucinations (in severe cases)
• Fatigue or loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• Thoughts of death or suicide

To determine and diagnosis about the types of bipolar disorder, the evaluation may include: physical exam though laboratory tests, psychiatric assessment to talk about your thoughts, believes, feelings and behavioural pattern, mood charting through keeping a daily record of your moods, sleep patterns or other factors which can help in the diagnosis

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The cause of bipolar disorder remains unclear but several studies have strongly suggested that genetics plays an important role in developing mood disorder.  In general population the individuals with no close family history having a risk to develop these disorders is about 2-3% but the children with a parent or sibling witnessing this disorder are prone to develop approximately 4-6 times. Increasing accuracy for bipolar disorder diagnosis can improve mental health treatment of patients. Recently proteomics become the most applied advanced analytical tool allowing the discovery of protein biomarkers for disease and treatment

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