Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a serious brain disease that causes extreme shifts in mood, energy, and functioning. Men and women are equally likely to develop this disabling illness, which affects approximately 1 percent of American adults ages 18 to 54 in a given year. Different from normal mood states of happiness and sadness, symptoms of bipolar disorder can be severe and life threatening. Bipolar disorder, which tends to run in families, typically emerges in adolescence or early adulthood and continues to flare up across the life course, disrupting work, school, family, and social life.
Bipolar disorder is characterized by symptoms that fall into several major categories.
Episodes of hypomania, or mild mania, include symptoms such as increased energy, elevated mood, irritability, and intrusiveness, which may cause little impairment in functioning but are noticeable to others. Sometimes, severe depression or mania is accompanied by periods of psychosis. Psychotic symptoms associated with bipolar disorder typically reflect the extreme mood state at the time. Symptoms of mania and depression are present at the same time. The symptom picture frequently includes agitation, trouble sleeping, significant change in appetite, psychosis, and suicidal thinking.