0_Wizard
Do you know much about bipolar disorder, it used to be known as manic depression that causes depression and elevated mood.
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that causes periods of depression and periods of elevated mood.
chosen_Bipolar_disorder_0
Bipolar disorder
chosen_topic_0_Bipolar_disorder
Bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder that causes periods of depression and periods of elevated mood. The elevated mood is significant and is known as mania or hypomania, depending on its severity, or whether symptoms of psychosis are present. During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy, or irritable. Individuals often make poorly thought out decisions with little regard to the consequences. The need for sleep is usually reduced during manic phases. During periods of depression, there may be crying, a negative outlook on life, and poor eye contact with others.
Biology of bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder is an affective disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and depression. The cause and mechanism of bipolar disorder is unknown, and the study of its biological origins is ongoing. Although no single gene causes the disorder, a number of genes are linked to increase risk of the disorder, and various gene environment interactions may play a role in predisposing individuals to developing bipolar. Neuroimaging and postmortem studies have found abnormalities in a variety of brain regions, although most commonly implicated regions include the ventral prefrontal cortex and amygdala.
Mood disorder
Mood disorder, also known as mood (affective) disorders, is a group of conditions where a disturbance in the person's mood is the main underlying feature. The classification is in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Mood disorders fall into the basic groups of elevated mood, such as mania or hypomania; depressed mood, of which the best-known and most researched is major depressive disorder (MDD) (commonly called clinical depression, unipolar depression, or major depression); and moods which cycle between mania and depression, known as bipolar disorder (BD) (formerly known as manic depression).
Bipolar II disorder
Bipolar II disorder (BP-II; pronounced "type two bipolar" or "bipolar type two" disorder) is a bipolar spectrum disorder (see also Bipolar disorder) characterized by at least one episode of hypomania and at least one episode of major depression. Diagnosis for bipolar II disorder requires that the individual must never have experienced a full manic episode (unless caused by an antidepressant; otherwise one manic episode meets the criteria for bipolar I disorder). Hypomania is a sustained state of elevated or irritable mood that is less severe than mania and does not significantly impact quality of life.
Mania
Mania, also known as manic syndrome, is a state of abnormally elevated arousal, affect, and energy level, or "a state of heightened overall activation with enhanced affective expression together with lability of affect." Although mania is often conceived as a "mirror image" to depression, the heightened mood can be either euphoric or irritable; indeed, as the mania intensifies, irritability can be more pronounced and result in violence, or anxiety. The symptoms of mania include heightened mood (either euphoric or irritable); flight of ideas and pressure of speech; and increased energy, decreased need for sleep, and hyperactivity.
Treatment of bipolar disorder
The emphasis of the treatment of bipolar disorder is on effective management of the long-term course of the illness, which can involve treatment of emergent symptoms. Treatment methods include pharmacological and psychological techniques. The primary treatment for bipolar disorder consists of medications called mood stabilizers, which are used to prevent or control episodes of mania or depression. Medications from several classes have mood stabilizing activity. Many individuals may require a combination of medication to achieve full remission of symptoms. As it is impossible to predict which medication will work best for a particular individual, it may take some trial and error to find the best medication or combination for a specific patient.
Major depressive disorder
Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known simply as depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of low mood that is present across most situations. It is often accompanied by low self-esteem, loss of interest in normally enjoyable activities, low energy, and pain without a clear cause. People may also occasionally have false beliefs or see or hear things that others cannot. Some people have periods of depression separated by years in which they are normal while others nearly always have symptoms present. Major depressive disorder can negatively affect a person's personal, work, or school life, as well as sleeping, eating habits, and general health.
1_Apprentice
I have heard of it b ut don't know much about it.  What causes Bi-polar disorder, or do they not know?
0_Wizard
They really don't understand what causes it but feel that environmental and genetic factors influence it.
The causes are not clearly understood, but both environmental and genetic factors play a role.
chosen_Bipolar_disorder_0
Bipolar disorder
chosen_topic_0_Bipolar_disorder
Child development
Child development entails the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. It is a continuous process with a predictable sequence, yet having a unique course for every child. It does not progress at the same rate and each stage is affected by the preceding developmental experiences. Because these developmental changes may be strongly influenced by genetic factors and events during prenatal life, genetics and prenatal development are usually included as part of the study of child development.
Race and intelligence
The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century. While tests have broadly shown differences in average scores based on self-identified race or ethnicity, there is considerable debate as to whether and to what extent those differences reflect environmental factors as opposed to genetic ones, as well as to the definitions of what "race" and "intelligence" are, and whether they can be objectively defined at all. Currently, there is no non-circumstantial evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component, although some researchers believe that the existing circumstantial evidence makes it at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually be found.
History of the race and intelligence controversy
The history of the race and intelligence controversy concerns the historical development of a debate, concerning possible explanations of group differences encountered in the study of race and intelligence. Since the beginning of IQ testing around the time of World War I there have been observed differences between average scores of different population groups, but there has been no agreement about whether this is mainly due to environmental and cultural factors, or mainly due to some genetic factor, or even if the dichotomy between environmental and genetic factors is the most effectual approach to the debate.
Nature versus nurture
The nature versus nurture debate is about whether human behaviour is determined by the environment, either prenatal or during a person's life, or by a person's genes. The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French. The combination of the two concepts as complementary is ancient (Greek: ). Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of exposure, experience and learning on an individual.
Heritability
Heritability is a statistic used in the fields of breeding and genetics that estimates the degree of variation in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population. In other words, the concept of heritability can alternately be expressed in the form of the following question: "What is the proportion of the variation in a given trait within a population that is "not" explained by the environment of random chance?" Other causes of measured variation in a trait are characterized as environmental factors, including measurement error. In human studies of heritability these are often apportioned into factors from "shared environment" and "non-shared environment" based on whether they tend to result in persons brought up in the same household being more or less similar to persons who were not.
Biology and sexual orientation
The relationship between biology and sexual orientation is a subject of research. A simple and singular determinant for sexual orientation has not been conclusively demonstrated; various studies point to different, even conflicting positions, but scientists hypothesize that a combination of genetic, hormonal, and social factors determine sexual orientation. Biological theories for explaining the causes of sexual orientation are favored by experts and involve a complex interplay of genetic factors, the early uterine environment and brain structure. These factors, which may be related to the development of a heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or asexual orientation, include genes, prenatal hormones, and brain structure.
Height and intelligence
The study of height and intelligence is the analysis of how variations in height affect human intelligence. Some epidemiological research on the subject has shown that there is a small but statistically significant positive correlation between height and intelligence after controlling for socioeconomic class and parental education. This correlation arises in both the developed and developing world and persists across age groups. There is no scientific consensus on why this correlation arises, but one possible explanation is that height may act as a biomarker for nutritional status and health during intellectual development.