bipolar a fake disease?

[sadbadpsychogirl]

i was recently in a mental hospital where one patient told me that bipolar is not real and he has proof... so what do ya'll think? i'd say its pretty real but then what the hell do i know..

 

[BPD Barbie]

As someone who has bipolar, it feels very real to me. Did he give you any information why he thinks it's a fake illness?
As someone who has bipolar, it feels very real to me. Did he give you any information why he thinks it's a fake illness?

 

[Wisdom3_1-9]

Did he actually offer the proof? I'm sure there are a lot of bipolar patients, psychiatrists, psychologists, and researchers who could offer their own proofs.

 

[Jojo81]

I suffer from bipolar and I know it's real... Hypomania and depression cannot be explained to or understood by normies

 

[WinterFaust]

I have bipolar and I'm not sure how anyone could claim it's fake. It can and has ruined lives untreated. It has also been extensively researched and documented. What was the proof that he offered?

 

[Deleted member 19654]

What was the other patient in the hospital for? Did he have bipolar but is just in denial?

 

[Squiddy]

Unless they're a psychiatrist, I wouldn't pay much attention to them

 

[WinterFaust]

What was the other patient in the hospital for? Did he have bipolar but is just in denial?

Pertinent question. Denial is how people approach a lot of things but is a very real part of having bipolar.

 

[Lupgevif]

Why was this patient in a mental hospital for in the first place?

 

[sadbadpsychogirl]

What was the other patient in the hospital for? Did he have bipolar but is just in denial?

What was the other patient in the hospital for? Did he have bipolar but is just in denial?

i don't know what his problem was but he was a troublemaker, just bitching about everything (he was being discriminated against because they served ham for breakfast (he was not muslim) he accused all the staff of getting violent with him, (they were not) he told me to look up the history of bipolar which i have yet to do, but yeah attention seeker to the max... i know its real because it has severely impacted the quality of my life.

Why was this patient in a mental hospital for in the first place?

i'm guessing severe delusions of grandeur.

 

[watsonsmith]

I guess there's no point really addressing the comments by that patient once you described them... but whilst carrying this diagnosis (the doctors seem not to be sure whether I'm bipolar or "just" BPD) I do believe that the entire DSM-5 is a pile of labels attempting at capturing the plethora of human experience just so that they can be treated using drugs developed with the scientific method. In the West you are schizophrenic, manic or psychotic, in other cultures you might be two-spirit, a shaman or a medium.

I know I could live being who I am, without the medication, stigma and pain had I been born say in the Gambia or some indigenous tribe in the Amazon and was properly initiated.

So in a way, I agree that pretty much all mental health conditions are "fake" or rather inaccurate. And that's fine, because it allows for actually treating people given limited resources, but I prefer practitioners who have enough humility to admit this and treat each person as an individual, not a label.

 

[Final Escape]

i was recently in a mental hospital where one patient told me that bipolar is not real and he has proof... so what do ya'll think? i'd say its pretty real but then what the hell do i know..

In my honest opinion I think the symptoms are real but the underlying cause my not be what they say. It seems that some people legit have periods of major manic high times and then extreme lows lasting for long periods. I sometimes wonder if they are triggered into lasting flashbacks by outside events. There's a thing called emotional flashbacks that comes from having had early negative stressful events caused by child maltreatment. They can last anywhere from hours, days, to weeks or months. Then u snap out of the flashback and wonder what the hell? Where have I been? When u come back to sanity or a baseline mood and functioning. I was diagnosed as bipolar but I actually have emotional disorder or borderline personality disorder. Sometimes the meds can cause mania or hypomania. I wonder if it's the meds that actually make people have mania. I wouldn't know but I experienced hypomania on Prozac and adderall.

Americans have been increasingly socialized to equate inattention, anger, anxiety, and immobilizing despair with a medical condition, and to seek medical treatment rather than political remedies. What better way to maintain the status quo than to view inattention, anger, anxiety, and depression as biochemical problems of those who are mentally ill rather than normal reactions to an increasingly authoritarian society.
The reality is that depression is highly associated with societal and financial pains. One is much more likely to be depressed if one is unemployed, underemployed, on public assistance, or in debt (for documentation, see "400% Rise in Anti-Depressant Pill Use"). And ADHD labeled kids do pay attention when they are getting paid, or when an activity is novel, interests them, or is chosen by them.

 

[BipolarGuy]

i was recently in a mental hospital where one patient told me that bipolar is not real and he has proof... so what do ya'll think? i'd say its pretty real but then what the hell do i know..

When I was sectioned one guy told me that he is going to become king.
How serious do you think he was?

As a person who has a diagnosis of bipolar, I'm unsure whether bipolar has a biological mechanism (i.e. there is a real difference), or whether it is to some extent an arbitrary label given to people with certain 'issues' or patterns of behaviour (a lot of psychiatric diagnoses fall into this category).

Either way, it isn't a disease.

 

[Cow]

Shit is real..... Don't take advice from people actively in a mental hospital

 

[not4us]

@Maxtothemax your avatar cat is definitely bipolar

 

[sadbadpsychogirl]

When I was sectioned one guy told me that he is going to become king.
How serious do you think he was?

As a person who has a diagnosis of bipolar, I'm unsure whether bipolar has a biological mechanism (i.e. there is a real difference), or whether it is to some extent an arbitrary label given to people with certain 'issues' or patterns of behaviour (a lot of psychiatric diagnoses fall into this category).

Either way, it isn't a disease.

i couldn't tell if he was serious or just messing with everyone, he kept threatening to get all the staff fired,, call the news networks, claimed to be a millionaire, all this grandiose bs, he was treated very well by everyone he just wanted to make a scene..

 

[BipolarGuy]

i couldn't tell if he was serious or just messing with everyone, he kept threatening to get all the staff fired,, call the news networks, claimed to be a millionaire, all this grandiose bs, he was treated very well by everyone he just wanted to make a scene..

Sorry, who are you talking about?

 

[sadbadpsychogirl]

Sorry, who are you talking about?

the guy who said it was fake and was caused by my bones crushing nerves in my brain....

 

[BipolarGuy]

the guy who said it was fake and was caused by my bones crushing nerves in my brain....

OK this person shouldn't be listened to.

 

[Giraffey]

Hopefully you're not feeling dismayed or embarrassed for taking this guy at his word @sadbadpsychogirl, any of us can get taken in by a plausible sounding lie, or even an implausible lie if delivered with enough authority and confidence.

But I don't think any theory should ever simply be dismissed just because it sounds implausible. A very rudimentary understanding of medicine is enough to discredit this particular theory, but there are many other ideas for which it's not so easy.

Still, I'm not really partial to any conspiracy theories myself, but I never accept or dismiss anything without looking at the evidence for and against in an objective fashion and forming my own judgement.

 

[Racon]

Well at the end of the day all the disorders of personality are merely arbitrary namings of various associations of traits. The labels are created out of need to help people rather than proper scientific investigation.

 

[BitterlyAlive]

Well at the end of the day all the disorders of personality are merely arbitrary namings of various associations of traits. The labels are created out of need to help people rather than proper scientific investigation.

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. It may affect the personality, but it's not a personality disorder.

 

[Racon]

Sorry if I sound like an ass, but bipolar disorder is a mood disorder. It may affect the personality, but it's not a personality disorder.

Replace the word personality with mood then. My point is still the same.

 

[Sensei]

Well at the end of the day all the disorders of personality are merely arbitrary namings of various associations of traits. The labels are created out of need to help people rather than proper scientific investigation.

Are manic, hypomanic, depressive, and mixed episodes traits? I think most people would label them symptoms.

 

[Racon]

Are manic, hypomanic, depressive, and mixed episodes traits? I think most people would label them symptoms.

You are missing the point. No disorders of mood or personality are objectively real. They skip the scientific method out of a necessary need to help people. Now I don't know if the person the OP was speaking to was arguing these points but with all the comments in here I felt the need to make the point.

 

[Giraffey]

You are missing the point. No disorders of mood or personality are objectively real. They skip the scientific method out of a necessary need to help people. Now I don't know if the person the OP was speaking to was arguing these points but with all the comments in here I felt the need to make the point.

Not a criticism but an objective question here, if you make the argument that no disorders of mood are objectively real, how does one explain statistically significant clusters of symptoms among groups of unrelated patients? Let's say that clinic A sees 1000 patients who each suffer from a subset of core 'mood disorder' symptoms such as mania or hypomania (as judged blind by assessment by two doctors). Let's assume for the sake of this question that we've controlled for other variables in the sample.

If mood disorders are not objectively real and are instead a social construct then how would one explain the near-identical sets of clinical symptoms experienced by 1000 unrelated people at the clinic? There are not necessarily any biological markers we can look for but is the process I've just described not a scientific method? Or did I misunderstand your point entirely?

I would readily accept that some of the diagnoses in the DSM and ICD are poorly defined, some labels in the ICD, for example, are strictly cultural 'syndromes' that are arguably for the convenience of small populations of diagnosticians, and lacking in scientific merit. But I'm not convinced by the argument that mood disorders haven't been subjected to scientific method or are not genuine conditions. Unless you're referring to the diagnostic criteria itself, in which case that's a different discussion.

But I'm happy to be enlightened and consider a different perspective, hence the question.

 

[Sensei]

You are missing the point. No disorders of mood or personality are objectively real. They skip the scientific method out of a necessary need to help people. Now I don't know if the person the OP was speaking to was arguing these points but with all the comments in here I felt the need to make the point.

You wrote that disorders are "associations of traits" and I addressed that.

 

[Racon]

@SlowMo
Statistics and case studies give credibility to theories in psychology, but they lack the rigor of "harder" sciences.

@Sensei
I am not sure what you are trying to argue? Or was it a question?

 

[Giraffey]

@SlowMo
Statistics and case studies give credibility to theories in psychology, but they lack the rigor of "harder" sciences.

Understood, and I can sympathise with that argument, but what level of evidence would satisfy you? I take "harder sciences" to mean mood disorders should be underpinned by an organic aetiology? The question then becomes what level of proof you ask for. We have a rat model for bipolar disorder, so it's difficult to argue that it's an entirely social construct, and there is some low-quality evidence of structural differences visible using MRI scans.

Granted, these methods are either not appropriate or cost-effective for routine diagnosis, but I would argue at the very least they provide evidence for the existence of a mood disorder, even if said mood disorder is routinely over or under-diagnosed.

Would you not agree?

I agree with you that case studies are not "hard science" and the existence of disorders based on case study evidence alone is controversial, but I would also argue that rigorous statistical analysis is itself a valid scientific method, in-fact the "harder" sciences would be woefully useless without it - how else would one interpret vast quantities of raw data or look for trends across a spectrum of results?

It's an interesting debate nonetheless.

 

[schopenh]

You are missing the point. No disorders of mood or personality are objectively real. They skip the scientific method out of a necessary need to help people. Now I don't know if the person the OP was speaking to was arguing these points but with all the comments in here I felt the need to make the point.

It's scientific. Pattern recognition among the population of mentally ill, grouping the superficially similar presentations, in-vitro experiments to discover potential mechanisms, grouping patients and trialing treatments with controls etc. making hypotheses based on all of this, testing the hypotheses. This is a scientific process, even if the results are underwhelming or still preliminary.
The concept of depression in western medicine is what applying scientific thinking has revealed. Not much, but not nothing, and still science.