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Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, also referred to as manic-depressive illness, is a psychiatric diagnosis for a mood disorder. Individuals/children? with bipolar disorder experience incidents of a frantic state known as mania (or hypomania). During the lower level of this state, individuals seem enthusiastic and spirited and have been found to be highly productive (source). However during the upper end of this state, individuals become unpredictable and imprudent and make irrational decisions and during the highest level of the state of mania, individuals experience an abstraction in thought and enter a mental state referred to as psychosis (source). Depression is also a major aspect of bipolar. Those who commonly experience mania will also experience states of depression; some will even experience both mania and depression during the same episode (source). Intermixed by periods of ‘normal’ moods, these episodes characteristically last between a small number of days to numerous months (source).