Good afternoon, everyone. It's Dr. Niagara again with our next episode of Psychology Unplugged.

Hope everyone is well. And we're weathering through the pandemic, solely getting vaccinated,

getting back to whatever some semblance of normalcy is, which is a subjective term in and of itself.

Today's topic, I'm going to focus on the bipolar disorders. Now, this is

one of the most common referral questions that I get, does a patient have a bipolar disorder?

I think social media,

TV, movies have done a really poor job.

It really depicting the seriousness of this form of psychopathology.

You'll hear people say, oh, my God, you're so bipolar.

Oh, she's so bipolar. Can, oh, she's, she's so

bipolar. Can't be with her. And it really does a disservice because this is a very severe

psychiatric disorder. Now, there's three types of bipolar disorder. It's bipolar one, which is

the most severe. Bipolar 2 disorder and something called cyclothymic disorder.

So in all, in bipolar 1 and bipolar 2, they are essentially the same disorder.

The differentiation is both disorders require an individual to meet the diagnostic criteria for a major depressive episode.

The difference between mania, which is in bipolar 1, and hypomania, which is in bipolar 2, is the symptoms are the same.

It's the duration of time that the symptoms persist now in assessing

for bipolar disorder when i ask people then this the core kind of features is a decreased need for sleep

of sleeping for three hours, not sleeping for several days.

During which time an individual is experiencing excessive amounts of energy, feelings of

grandiosity, incredibly afflated sense of self-esteem, and euphoria, a disproportionate happiness.

And again, in bipolar, one, these symptoms would last for one week or longer.

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