How To Diagnose Bipolar Disorder
How to Diagnose Bipolar disorder:
The signs, which would lead to a diagnosis of bipolar II disorder, are:
1) Occurrence of at least one major depression episode.
2) One hypomanic episode is present at least.
3) The patient never has had a manic episode
4) The symptoms are not of any other type of disorder but exclusively of Bipolar disorder
Symptoms lead to impaired functioning or distress in the patient.
Diagnosis is based upon:
1) Observed behavior of the patient
2) Experiences reported by the patient.
3) Secondary Signs observed by the doctor, nurse, Psychiatrist etc.
4) Through the family history of the patient as such disorders are often hereditary.
How to diagnose Bipolar disorder is not very straightforward. There are no definite medical tests, which can provide a solution to the question on how to diagnose Bipolar disorder.
How to diagnose bipolar disorder is a frequently asked question by many psychiatrist students all over the world.
To diagnose a bipolar disorder an experienced psychiatrist will perform the following tests on the patient:
Physical Checkups of the Patient: The psychiatrist shall go through complete medical history of the patient and perform many tests on him. These are carried out in order to rule out the possibility of having other types of physical problems.
Psychiatric check ups of the patients: The psychiatrist shall also perform these check ups in order to rule out the possibility of having other Psychiatric problems.
Checking up family’s medical and psychiatric history: Researches show that Psychiatric disorders like the Bipolar disorder can be inherited from parents. Such problems may transfer from one generation to another, and tend to run in the family. If in a family some one has already suffered from a similar problem, there is a good chance that its the root cause of patients disorder. Studies have shown in the past that around ¾ of all mood disorders are inherited from parents, and that the parents have not even realized that they could have passed on their disorders to their children, delaying diagnosis for a long time. One needs to identify the symptoms as soon as possible, and take action so that the misery of the patient is reduced.
Judging the Patients present symptoms: If no other physical and psychiatric problems are found in the patient, and if its clear that family’s medical records show no such disorder that the patient is suffering from, and the symptoms have remained for a significant period of time and have caused serious functioning problems, then the patient can be diagnosed for Bipolar Disorder.
If no previous cases of Hypomania or mania are found in the patient, then the present symptoms be those of hypomania or mania for the diagnosis of bipolar disorder as it is characterized by both extreme phases of mood swings: Depression and Mania.
Once a diagnosis has been made, a doctor should use a combination of medication and therapy to achieve the best results in tacking the disorder. It has been shown that a combination of the two techniques brings about stellar results, which would not be possible in using the techniques, by themselves.