Manic depressive illness or bipolar disorder

Manic depressive illness is also known as bipolar disorder. This is another serious mental illness where mood or affect shows a profound and sustained change, either towards excessive unwarranted happiness, or unhappiness and sadness. in one phase of this illness - mania - they are ill with excessive happiness. They are elated without there being any justifiable reason for it; they are full of self confidence and self assurance and at times overbearingly so; their speech and thinking, as every thing else about them, are speed up. They flit from one topic to another with mercurial rapidity and it is difficult to follow their train of thought. They are garrulous and over talkative. In their self assured, elated state, they re full of ill-conceived grandiose schemes, which, often result in failure. It is difficult to thwart them from carrying these out, and they will have their own way. They are full of energy and activity and need little or no sleep, keeping up all night as active as a bee, flitting from one uncompleted task to another. Their appetite for everything is increased (including sex), and they may make excessive demands on the partner or may indulge in indiscriminate and damaging sex. On occasion, they come to believe that they are exalted or special persons, with special abilities, powers, and unlimited wealth, and that there is nothing in the world that they cannot do or achieve. They have hardly any understanding that they are ill or abnormal, and resist aggressively any attempt at obtaining medical attention, and thereby cause serious problems to those who have to care for them.

In the depressive phase of the illness one sees the opposite of that seen in mania. Here they feel sad, unhappy, and dejected or lacking in all pleasurable feelings; and feel slowed down in every way. Their thinking becomes slow, or confined to a few dejected themes which keep running around and around in the mind. They feel a lack of energy, and are disinterested in everything. They lack self-confidence and at times are frankly self deprecatory. They see their situation and their future with gloom and despondency, and they tend to withdraw from social contacts and all pleasurable activities. Sleep becomes difficult, and they tend to wake up in the early hours of the morning. Their appetite becomes poor and they lose weight. On the other hand, some of them may suffer from too much of both sleep and appetite. They seriously think of suicide as the only way out of their sorry predicament; and if untreated are likely to kill themselves. In manic-depressive illness, the patients suffer episodes of mania and depression alternately, inter-spaced by varying periods of normality. It should be happily noted that, in the mild cases, these phases are not very florid, and they border on normal mood swings that we all experience. Consult a psychiatrist and medications are available for effective treatment and they will have very good outcome with treatments. Also they need very good social support from family members and others for effective outcome.