About Bipolar Characteristics

Video Transcript

"I'm Dr. David Thomas. I'm a practicing psychotherapist in Tampa, Florida with Wilford Thomas Group, speaking to you today about the bipolar characteristics. Bipolar is a disorder, years ago we referred to it as manic-depression, today it's just bipolar. Bipolar is a mood disorder. It means the mood generally tends to be a depressed mood, often times associated with the bipolar, which is why they call it bipolar, is a manic state. So the characteristics of a bipolar disorder would be symptoms associated with depression and often times mania, or manic as well. So if we look at depression first, the symptoms associated with depression are certainly in bipolar the same with any other depression. Often times depression comes in a form of inability to think clearly. Generally, when you look at depression you're thinking about two pieces. One, kind of a hopelessness and helplessness. And so with the hopelessness piece if people view that there is no hope for change in the future as well as there's not anything they can do about it, you tend to see these symptoms at that time. Again, with those type of thoughts. If we look at mania for a moment, mania tends to be an elevated mood where depression is obviously decreased mood, mania tends to be an elevated mood. Probably the most common characteristics of mania are not just an elevated mood but the kind of a grandiosity kind of an escalated or exaggerated self-esteem. Often times with mania we tend to see folks, individuals engaging in high-risk behaviors. Some folks become almost hyper-focused on certain tasks. Mania you do tend to see pressured speech with mania you tend to be often times people have difficulties with boundaries. So bipolar is depression and mania, and it's a very complex disorder which really would require a lot more time to speak to. I'm Dr. David Thomas speaking to you about bipolar characteristics."