This paper will focus specifically on bipolar disorder, while focusing generally on the effects of the disorder on initiating and maintaining relationships. Focus must also be drawn to the background of the disorder. The reason for this focus is that bipolar disorder is often a very mysterious type of disorder that even now is not fully understood by psychiatrists. It used to be called manic-depression, but new editions of the DSM have made this sort of phraseology outdated, and some of the symptoms have changed as well. The reason that bipolar presents such a difficult problem for
psychiatrists is because it should be understood in a longitudinal way rather than a way that is based on direct impression. That is, someone with bipolar disorder is likely to exhibit vastly different symptoms at different periods of time, and therefore making one diagnosis based on only one point in time will most likely lead to some other disorder, such as depression, being followed. “Bipolar illness is a serious heritable mood disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of depression and mania. The mean age of onset is under 25 years of age, but the period of risk extends from prepuberty to senescence.
” (Dilsaver, 1989). But bipolar disorder is a mutable disorder with many sides to it, so that that same person who has been diagnosed with depression, if they are truly bipolar, may be exhibiting completely different symptoms somewhere down the line temporally in terms of time. In terms of dealing with symptoms of depression and manic states, this can make it very difficult for the individual with bipolar disorder to initiate and especially maintain relationships. Background Before its effects on relationships can be covered, bipolar disorder needs to be looked at both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.
Bipolar disorder is often thought of in episodes in which the individual displays different sorts of moods. This is why individuals with bipolar disorder are often diagnosed only after they have been observed for some amount of time, and there are undoubtedly a lot of missed diagnoses because of psychiatrists looking at the problem cross-sectionally without thinking of the time-span involved. This is one of the factors that makes bipolar disorder so complicated. Generally speaking, bipolar disorder can be understood somewhat through its history of being called manic-depression.