Introduction
Bipolar disorder is a mental illness that affects common performance of human brain. This disease is also known as manic depression disorder and mood disorder. This disease has been emerged as a major threat to public health in busy schedule and competitive environment of today’s life. People are stressed due to a number of reasons and this only aggravates the problem of bipolar disorder. This paper intends to discuss bipolar disease, its causes, methods of treatment, and several other related aspects of the subject matter.
Causes of Mental Illness:
Bipolar disorder can be described as mental illness that has serious impacts on individual’s life who is suffering from the illness. This disorder could damage individual’s relationship with his family & friends, undercut career opportunities, and adversely impacts educational performances. Individual’s suffering from mental illness sometimes get so depressed that they may decide to commit suicide (Peacock 42). There could be various reasons that cause bipolar disorder; such disorder is result of multiple factors act jointly. Major causes of bipolar disorder are:
Genetics: over a period of time it has been identified that genetics substantially contributes toward bipolar disorders. Individuals have either parents suffering from this order are in higher risk of getting affected with the disorder. However it has not been identified that which gene is responsible for carrying disorder from one generation to other but this true that bipolar disorder get transmitted in blood relatives (Gilbert 290). According to a study conducted by group of scientists shows that abnormal sequences in DNA and rare copy of number variants play a main role in increasing the threat of bipolar disorder in individuals (Peacock 11).
Biological Traits: patients suffering from bipolar disorder undergone through various physical changes that mainly developed in their brains. These changes get reflected in individual behavior on certain issues, emotional fluctuations and overall thought process of individual (Gilbert 287). However it is not yet proven that these changes are the main reason behind this disorder.
Brain Chemical Misbalance: improper functioning of neurotransmitter plays important role in several mental disorders. It also causes depression and various other mental disorders. Neurotransmitters are important chemicals that accelerate communication or messaging between brain cells. Dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine are major examples of neurotransmitters. Brain is important part of human body that governs all activities of body by transmitting signals from one cell to another (Peacock 11). Brain helps in understanding message associated with any signal and control functioning of different body parts. Any damage in brain chemicals impacts overall functioning of human body.
Hormonal Problems: hormones are important elements that perform various functions in human body including management of growth of different parts of body, management of feelings and function as a catalyst to accelerate the speed of various reactions. Thereby any imbalance in hormones could cause various disorders including bipolar disorder (Peacock 11).
Environmental Factors: there are various events occurred in human life which impacts mental state of individual significantly. These events include any type of abuse, excessive metal pressure, significant loss in terms of monetary or personal, and accidents could increase the threat of bipolar disorder (Peacock 11). Traumatic events such as death of parents or loved one, job loss, or any casualty can also lead towards this disorder (Gilbert 287). Individual’s relationship with other people, friends and family members impact his metal conditions and bad relationship causes depression which could lead to this disorder.
Physiological Factors: brains structure is not uniform across all individuals and in patients suffering from this illness it has different size of different regions as compare to normal individuals. Abnormalities in functioning of different brain regions could lead to bipolar disorder. MRI report of various patients shows the different size of different parts of brain such as globus pallidus, and lateral ventricles (Peacock 11). Abnormal inflection between limbic portion and ventral prefrontal contributes towards improper emotional regulations and swing in mood.
Symptoms and Test
Bipolar disorder affects the personality of people suffering from this disease in such a way that their personal, professional and social life is completely shattered. Apart from destroying every kind of relationships, it brings several other problems related to different aspects of human life. Bipolar disorder affects mood of a person and can cause very wild swings in mood of the person suffering from it (Geddes and Miklowitz 1674). A person may react badly on very normal things or may not react on anything which requires reaction. Overall a person who suffers from this disease may behave in completely unpredictable manner. Inventory of Stigmatizing Experiences has been found as an effective medium of rectify and quantify the disease through its two modules namely, Stigma Experiences Scale along with Stigma Impact Scale.
Stigma due to bipolar disorder
It is very normal for bipolar patients to feel stigmatized. Patients suffering from bipolar diseases face several problems, discriminations at work places, in society and at almost every other place. These people are not given opportunities to work and they are denied even fundamental rights in several cases. More than a few research reports show that people, suffering from bipolar patients, are discriminated in the family as well as in the society. Such discrimination stigmatizes patients of bipolar disorders and they start feeling lonely, neglected and helpless (Peacock 38-39).
Such stigma can be detrimental and it may prevent bipolar patients from being recovered. Link and Phelan recognizes the effect of stigma on bipolar patients in five different stages i.e. labeling, status loss, stereotyping, separation, and discrimination (Link and Phelan 363). Once a person is labeled as bipolar patient, his life becomes difficult and then it further affects his recovery. People do not let him live his way and harass the patient in numerous ways. Such harassment and stigmatization makes his life perpendicularly painful.
Reasons of not taking treatment
People who start facing issues or symptoms related to bipolar diseases hesitate from taking help of experts. Taking expert services at initial stage may solve such problems in an effective manner but due to the behavior of family members, society and fear of losing jobs prevents people from disclosing their problem of bipolar disorder. Instead of showing any sympathy towards bipolar patients people mock them and harass them at every place which leaves these people devastated (Peacock 12).
People, who have symptoms of bipolar diseases, hesitate and fear that once they disclose their problems, they will be labeled as mental patient and everybody including the family members and other people of society will start treating them that way. They also have a fear of being fired from their jobs and to avoid these issues of family, society and workplaces, people just hesitate from taking treatment at initial stages.
Effects of not taking treatment
Bipolar patient avoid taking treatment due to above said reasons. The problem aggravates gradually and people start facing serious problems ahead. The stigma that they wanted to avoid becomes more prominent when they are seriously ill and start reacting abnormally because of their advanced level of disease (Mileva et al.32). After being detected as a serious patient of bipolar disorder, they are subjected to a number of discriminations and restrictions in the family, society and at workplaces.
Not taking proper treatment may further aggravate the problem and bipolar disorder can lead towards madness. It has been observed in a number of cases that people, who kept avoiding treatment, faced severe problems. It became a challenge for doctors to treat such complicated cases. In some cases, even treatment could not return these patients into a complete normal situation.
Conclusion
After having a detailed discussion on bipolar disorder, its causes and other related aspects, it can be concluded that bipolar disorder is a common disease in today’s life. People, who suffer due to this problem, should take treatment as soon as they come to know about this problem. In no case they should hesitate from disclosing their problem and getting treatment. The duty of society and family members towards them is to give them proper care as well sympathy and not to avoid them. Awareness is required to face such issues and avoiding them is not a solution but it aggravates the problem.
Works Cited
Geddes, JR and Miklowitz, DJ. "Treatment of bipolar disorder." Lancet (2013): 1672–82.
Gilbert, P. "Evolution and depression: Issues and implications." Psychological Medicine 36 (2005): 287–297.
Link B. G. and Phelan J. C. "Conceptualizing stigma." Annual Review of Sociology (2001): 363–385.
Peacock, Judith. Bipolar Disorder. Minnesota: Capstone, 2000.
V. R Mileva, G. H. Vazquez and R. Milev. "Effects, experiences, and impact of stigma on patients with bipolar disorder." Neuropsychiatr Disease Treatment (2013): 31–40.
