What´s a Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is generally a term that society and the media have stigmatized as something horrid. A mental illness that has labeled the individual as crazy due to the extreme pendulum of mood swings. Where we know the individual diagnosed with the disorder is usually happy, sad, irritated, and depressed all in a short period of time. Often times when typically functioning people cringe at the idea of having the mental illness.
For myself, I would have to honestly state that I was once one of those individuals. Most in part due to my lack of education on the matter, using the term to describe any and everything that had an extreme shift in mood, action, feeling, or thought. Until I finally reached a breaking point in my life where I had thought that I could have the illness. No I didn’t wake up one morning and hop on the Internet surfing for answers about what could possibly be going on with me but the mere fact that the stress in my life, with my family and relationship came to be a little too much to handle.
I was raised in a young, two-parent home with my younger brother, in a world of constant chaos. My mother being African American and my father being Caribbean American there were often times cultural difference that would cause disputes to arise in my home. From a very young age I can remember my parents fighting and arguing about any and everything. The chaos soon became normal for me, even though I did not like it when they argued I grew accustomed to it. As I got older things never really got any better but I realized that my friends did not have these sort of things going on at their homes. Right before college it began to happen. Now I was the one getting into the argument with my mom, nothing was right or even wr...

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... difficulty completing and managing daily tasks due to their illness.
Overall findings conducted by Jönsson and colleagues (2008) demonstrated the never ending process of moving back and forth toward acceptance and the struggle between self- perception and other people’s opinion of the illness, which makes the process of acceptance more difficult. Individuals find it hard to identify themselves as mentally ill, with perceptions often being associated with poor functioning and being different from other people; often times being described as a difficult feeling to escape from. The complexity involved in accepting, understanding, and managing bipolar disorder is an ongoing process that is a challenge to deal with on a daily basis. Feelings of limitations and worries about stigmatization, which often times lead to an uncertain view of the future (Jönsson et al 2008).