Is bipolar disorder?

Bipolar is a chemical imbalance that affects the moods and sometimes the perceptions of the senses. With bipolar you have fluctuating moods (sadness goes to anger goes to happiness) and in some cases you can get psychosis (hallucinations, delusions)

If I understand your question correctly what you are asking is if Bipolar is an actual "physical" illness and not just a "psychological" meaning in your head "imagined" illness. It is a real illness. You can't just "get over it" because you want to. Depending on the severity it can be very debilitating. The best way I can explain in layman's terms is in a person's brain when they experience something that makes them feel happy, sad, angry, etc. a little gates opens up and send the happy/sad/angry chemical through letting your brain know what to feel then the gate closes and all is well. In a bipolar person when this gate opens up it just sometimes doesnt' close. The happy/sad/angry chemical just keeps going and results in the highs and lows that everyone is talking about. Sometimes the dang gate just opens all by itself for no reason at all. Imagine how you would feel if you were just so angry you wanted to break something or hurt someone and you had no earthly idea why you felt that way. That's bipolar in a nutshell. I hope that helps.

Bipolar disorder is a physical condition with psycologic affects. It is caused by altered brain physiology but scientists are not sure of the precise cause. It is normally treated with lithium. As a nursing student and being formerly engaged to an individual with bipolar, it sucks. Treatment is for life and if you forget to take a pill you can tell. It can be hereditary.

Technically, it's defined as an Axis 1 disorder, which means it is a physical condition rather than a personality disorder (Axis 2).

There is some evidence from MRI scans that there are structural abnormalities (enlarged ventricles) in the brain. Interestingly, schizophrenics show identical enlargements; it is possible to identify patients very accurately from an MRI scan, but impossible to distinguish between schizphrenia and bipolar using this method.

What is not clearly understood is the method of action in the brain. Yes, it is a problem with neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in the brain that regulate moods and emotions, just like depression, but which ones and how they work is not understood.

Bipolar depression is a physical medical condition, the chemicals in the brain send you swinging from one extreme mood to the other.

My sister has it and from what we have learnt, it is true that there is a severe chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not pleasant for the sufferer or those around them. It can turn physical if not treated correctly. I mean, they can resort to extreme measures such as self harm. They get extreme highs and very low lows, and both of these are as bad as each other. In the highs they think they are invincible and will do such things as seriously speeding in cars, etc. Then in the lows, we get the self-harm aspect.

It is definitely a "gene" thing. It is on both sides of our family and unfortunately, she got it.

Hope this helps :)

Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric diagnostic category describing a class of mood disorders in which the person experiences clinical depression and/or mania, hypomania, and/or mixed states. The disorder can cause great distress among those afflicted and those living with them. Left untreated, bipolar disorder can be a disabling condition, with a high risk of death through suicide.

I have bipolar & for me it was largely inherited (genes,, I guess) from both sides of my parents. So How could I not have It???

Of course it is a psycological condition, but it can defininately affect your physical overall condition..such as what might you do or not do that you would not otherwise do when you are depressed or manic!!!

its a psych condition that has some phyiscal causes but also others such as environmental,behavioural and cognitive stressors that stimualte the pre-existing vulnrability to developing it. Physical causes can be varied...Psychological resarchers have found that people with B.P. tend to have abnormalities in their lithium-sodium transfer....abnormalities on the genes in their 18th chromsome and so on. So its a psych disorder but has physical causes although they aren't the only types of causes....we are finding in psychology that mental illnesses may have a variety of causes that may integrate and thus we need more sophisticated explanatory models that intergrate all theoretical paradigms of mental illness (cognitive,biological, behavioural) etc etc...to explain their development. Hope this helps!

Physical = its a chemical imbalance in the brain (by your definition)

But its really both psychological and physical...

The physical brain needs meds to be stable. But its listed as psychological because they use mood stabilzers to treat it.