Bipolar disorder can affect a person’s life in many different areas. The affects can be largely based on the type of bipolar disorder that one is suffering from. There are several different types of bipolar disorder, each is marked by the occurrence of different amounts of mania or depression. The overall main affect is that someone who has bipolar disorder will have the disorder for the rest of his/her life (NIMH 2008). Family There are many effects that bipolar disorder can have for an individual.
Some of these effects are happening to the family and can be problems with the individual on a familial basis. In one research article that was written by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder, the researchers chose to use an observational coding system and Camberwell Family Interview EOI ratings to examine the construct validity for both appropriate and inappropriate emotional involvement permitting separate ratings for relatives intrusiveness, self-sacrificing behaviors, and distress related to the patients well being.
They found that emotional involvement can be measured directly and is not simply a reflection of strong affective response to living with family members who had bipolar disorder. Observational coding of the emotional involvement with separate ratings for intrusiveness, self-sacrifice, and emotional response has been shown to be a potentially valuable method for investigating the family environment of patients with bipolar disorder (Fredman, Baucom, Miklowitz, and Stanton 2008).
When looking at the family and the consequences to the family of having a family member with bipolar disorder there are some different types of information that can be gathered about the importance in family life. This means that there are a lot of various issues that arise within the family in connection to having a family member who is suffering from this form of a mental illness.
The authors, researchers at Butler Hospital, Rhode Island Hospital, and the University of Texas at Austin, used a repeated measures longitudinal design to examine whether global family functioning was associated with the presence of a concurrent bipolar episode as well as whether global family functioning was associated with the presence of manic and depressive episodes in the following three months. They found that as an individual’s mood status fluctuates, concurrent family functioning fluctuates as well but that family functioning was not associated with changes in episode status (Uebelacker, Beevers, Battle, Strong, Keitner, Ryan 2006).