What could be more natural than the alternation of sadness and excitement? However, it can be a serious illness, a form of depression that must be detected, because it threatens the mental health of 500,000 French people.
Suffering from bipolar disorder means oscillating between two opposing moods: being hyperactive, euphoric, irritable; overflowing with projects, spending recklessly, losing all inhibition. Or, conversely, to feel sad, slowed down, without desire and to encounter great difficulties in daily life; as a bonus, in any case, with seriously disturbed sleep. Signs that doctors and their patients tend to trivialize: our society values hyperactivity, being very dynamic, doing a lot, sleeping little, having an excess of confidence in self… This explains why, in 60% of cases, it is the depressive side alone, which will worry and motivate the first consultation.
In our country, doctors have a heavy hand on antidepressant drugs: they find there an ideal prescription field … However, in this disease, the error of diagnosis at the outset is paid for in cash, because the effect of drugs supposed to increase the activity in people who at some point in their illness will need the opposite effect is disastrous! According to Professor Pierre-Michel Llorca, head of the psychiatry service at Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital, if we know that 500,000 people in our country suffer from bipolar disorders, as many men as women, this figure is probably underestimated. ; because of diagnostic errors, due to the confusion of bipolar disorder with classic depression, which we must now call, quite rightly, “unipolar”!
The so-called “normal” mood has its ups and downs, but limited in duration and intensity. They are responses to particular events that do not prevent them from functioning in their environment, without significant or abnormal suffering.
Bipolar disorders appear, either for no apparent reason or as a reaction to a triggering factor; it is not rare to find, in personal history, a separation, a job loss, a move, or the consumption of illicit substances… Due to the alternation between the depressive phases and the phases of excitement , doctors are faced with people who do not like to consult very much because they find the periods of elation pleasant, creative and fear that the treatment, which will aim to smooth their mood, will turn them into sad and helpless individuals. flavor. For all these reasons, it takes 8 years, on average, between the onset of the disorders and the confirmation of the diagnosis. This is regrettable, because in the absence of specific treatments, which are rather effective, bipolar disorders have a significant impact on all areas of life; professional withdrawals are numerous, and the risk of divorce multiplied by three …
These bipolar disorders are all the more disabling when the disease starts in someone rather young, when he or she settles into life, when he studies, or when he begins to form his family. The symptoms will often worsen, with the appearance of rapid cycles, that is to say more than four episodes per year, and the usual compensations: alcohol, drugs or medication. Medicine is facing a real public health problem, with its brutal translation: the risk of attempted suicide is, in “bipolar” people, 15 times higher than in the general population. Easy to understand why the care must be early, urgent and appropriate. To achieve this, we cannot stress enough that, faced with these symptoms, which are not always objective, those around them must be extremely vigilant and not hesitate to seek help from a psychiatrist.
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