TO READ: Unipolar and Bipolar Depression -- Differences
Many of us, psychiatrists included, tend to assume that a depression is a depression -- whether it's a unipolar one (ie, "major depression") or due to the depressed phase of bipolar disorder. But a recent report says that's not so.
British researchers compared 593 people with major depression and 443 with bipolar disorder, looking at their depression symptoms and the course of their illness. The findings showed several distinctions. Bipolar depressions tended to more often have:
* the presence of psychosis (ie, delusions or hallucinations)
* daily mood variation
* hypersomnia (sleeping too much) during depressive episodes
* more shorter depressive episodes
These are all features you may want to keep an eye on and discuss with your mental health care provider because treatments for the two illnesses do differ.
For more information: The British Journal of Psychiatry (2008) 192:388-389.
About Me
- Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer, Ph.D.
- My book, WRITING THROUGH THE DARKNESS: EASING YOUR DEPRESSION WITH PAPER AND PEN, was published by Celestial Arts in June 2008. I've been a science journalist, textbook editor and author, poet, memoirist, creative writing instructor and -- sometimes -- a bipolar depressed person, since earning my Ph.D. in biology at Stanford University in 1991. For the past ten years, I've combined my interests in writing and mental health by teaching creative writing to other people with mood disorders in a class meeting at Stanford's Psychiatry Department. I speak on mental health topics, both personal and professional, to a wide variety of groups.
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