Roxanne
「Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful
behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes
the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its
origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an
illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one
that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not
infrequently, suicide.」
Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., An Unquiet Mind, 1995,
p. 6.
Bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive
illness, is a serious disorder of the brain. More than 2.3 million
American adults, or about one percent of the population in a given year,
have bipolar disorder. However, such a prevalent
illness is easily ignored due to much misinformation.
The symptoms divide
into three very different periods: depression, mania, and mixed state.
At the first period one may feel down and
experience loss of interest in
activities that used to be enjoyable. When
one is really depressed, he or she soon enters
a high mood: overly inflated self-esteem, increased talkativeness, and
racing thoughts. Then
in the next stage, all
of these symptoms come together
to create the mixed state. These
periods do not show up
in turns, and people
tend to ignore it as just an
affective fluctuation. When it comes to the
symptom-free interval, people may feel just all right despite
what had happened.
Because
of such complicated moods and expressions,
bipolar disorder sometimes resembles
conductive disorder, misuse of alcoholic or psycho toxic, obsessional
neurosis, or even personality disorder, and may
hinder a person』s self-discovery. There are still many people
who are too ashamed
to see a couch doctor: 」 I』m not going to
see a shrink. I』m not insane!」 They don』t want
to face the stigma of
being diagnosed with mental problems.
Our
society is partly responsible for this failure to properly deal with
manic depression. Due to the increase
in bipolar disorder, our media now often report it. But actually the
medical research is not done yet, and the medical science is not
full-fledged; it is too hard to tell whether one is manic-depressive or
not. Most of the time the patient discovers his/her bipolar disorder
just because he/she happens to know someone who has suffered from the
same illness. However, it is never possible for everyone to sit and
wait for others to tell them their mental problems. Our society must
establish a well-round professional medical system for bipolar disorder
and teach the crowd the right concepts in order to prevent people from
wrongly self-diagnosing themselves. Suffering from bipolar disorder is
not a shame, but it will be a pity if one does not face it.