Bipolar Disorder Research Paper

Throughout a single day, individuals can feel several separate types of emotions. A mother for example can feel frustration with her coworkers, anger at her husband, joy towards her children, and sadness towards information given to her at some point in her day. Every individual experiences moments of highs and lows during the course of a day. Imagine then what it would feel like to have the high and low emotions of the day be at such extremes that they completely consume all parts of life. Bipolar disorder touches many individuals and significantly affects how regular emotions present themselves. Bipolar disorder is categorized as being a type of mood disorder based upon the association of behavior that is evident within each case. Bipolar

One huge issues has to do with different cultures defining depression and mania in different ways. Every culture has their own idea of what it looks like for someone to be sad or overly zealous about something. The issue is with something like bipolar disorder, it heavily relies on the interpretation of the individual diagnosing as to whether or not they believe the individual to fall under certain depression or mania categories. Another significant environmental factor is differences in not only how symptoms are perceived culturally, but how the symptoms are expressed culturally as well. In Eastern cultures for example, they are not prone to the feelings of self-loathing and self-hatred as westerners are. Their symptoms tend to manifest themselves in more physical characteristics such as loss of appetite or loss of sleep instead of having such significant psychological symptoms like westerners do (Butcher et al.,

One of the main treatments for bipolar disorder is by using mood stabilizers and antipsychotics to treat both the mania and depressive side of the bipolar disorder. The issue with using traditional mood stabilizers is that disorder itself fluctuates increasingly between mania and depression. The nature of the disease causes it to be difficult to treat because the onset of symptoms is unpredictable. Another reason as to why using antipsychotics and mood stabilizers can tend to be ineffective is due to the patient themselves. Many, if not most, of the individuals put on mood stabilizers fail to take their medicine appropriately. It is because of this that the individuals are failing to give their bodies the chance to even normalize and work with the medication to stabilize their mood. This is why though medicine tends to be the first and most simple option, it typically fails the most (Jann,