The joys of having mental disorders. I just read a blog post "Bipolar is a Progressive, Organic Brain Disease. Medication Helps Stop Damage to Brain."
This is rather disconcerting. Of course, our brains deteriorate as we age, but unmedicated or unregulated medications can cause worse damage. The big one is manic and hypomanic episodes. Those ones really kick you in the ass. The more episodes, the more brain damage, the more likely some form of dementia.
Here is your brain and your brain on bipolar disorder, albeit an euthymic brain.
In simple terms, euthymia is the state of living without mood disturbances. It's commonly associated with bipolar disorder. While in a euthymic state, one typically experiences feelings of cheerfulness and tranquility. A person in this state may also display an increased level of resiliency to stress.
Another definition: "In psychiatry and psychology, euthymia is a normal, tranquil mental state or mood. In those with bipolar disorder, euthymia is a stable mental state or mood that is neither manic nor depressive, yet distinguishable from the state of healthy people."
1. Bipolar disorder is frequently inherited, with genetic factors accounting for approximately 80% of the cause of the condition. Bipolar disorder is the most likely psychiatric disorder to be passed down from family. If one parent has bipolar disorder, there's a 10% chance that their child will develop the illness.
2. Genetic factors account for about 60 to 80 percent of the cause of bipolar disorder. That means that heredity isn't the only cause of bipolar disorder. It also means that if you have a family history of the disorder, you won't definitely develop it.
3. There is no single bipolar gene that determines if an individual will be diagnosed with bipolar during their lifetime, but there is a hereditary component to the disorder. One review published in Neuroscience found that bipolar is one of the most heritable medical disorders. Twin studies have corroborated this, estimating bipolar disorder to be 60-80% heritable. For example, having a parent who has bipolar can make you more genetically susceptible to having bipolar as well. Your risk increases if more than one immediate family member, say your other parent, has the condition too. However, as with most mental health disorders, genetics is only part of the equation. Mental health is a combination of genetics, experiences, lifestyle choices, and your surrounding environment, both past and present.
Role of child maltreatment and gender for bipolar symptoms in young adults. The results show that recollections of abuse, particularly emotional abuse, were associated with more severe depressive symptoms; this finding, however, only applied to women. Hypomanic and manic symptoms were not associated with recollections of abuse. For hypomanic symptoms, however, a significant decrease over the 2 years was observed. The findings of this study suggest that recollections of abusive experiences in childhood combined with female gender increase the risk for depression, whereas hypomanic and manic states are probably better predicted by other factors, such as current life circumstances.
Where do I fall in all of this? For the past couple of years, I have been slightly hypomanic but not euthymic. My medication intake has been sporadic depending on how I'm doing; it's about 90%. In the end, does it matter? Not really. Bipolar disorder is incurable. It's for life. The only thing you can do is manage it with medication and therapy. Some things say it calms down in later life while others state that it gets worse, especially verbal and physical aggression. Woodsie says they just drug the old ones up until they shut up. Very sad.
Comments
Post a Comment