Question

Bipolar disorder (BD) is diagnosed by the presence of mania or hypomania, as well as a depressive episode. Based on those diagnostic criteria, one could conceptualize BD as a syndrome of major depression coupled with mania. Consider why it is that bipolar disorder is diagnosed the way it currently is as opposed to depression plus mania.

Answer 1

depression is only a mood disorder. There would be feelings of great amount of sadness as well as despair which may be interfering with the sleep as well as appetite of a person, along with an overwhelming feeling of fatigue.

Whereas, in bipolar disorder, the person may sometimes feel energetic and sometimes they may feel sad or demotivated. These are thepeople who would be experiencing great range of highs and lows in their emotions. This cannot be separately considered along with depressive disorder, as in depressive disorder there are only lows and no highs.

Bipolar disorder may also be referred to as manic depression. In this condition, the may be periods of no symptoms as well. Which does not occur in case of depression. Also, in bipolar disorder, there could be cases when mania as well as depression may occur simultaneously or there may be symptoms of mania or hypomania followed by depression and swinging to and fro.

Hence, bipolar disorder cannot be considered as depression plus mania, since, there are episodes of emotes ranging from high to low, which may alternate with time.