Bipolar 1 Disorder or Bipolar 2 Disorder - Which is Worse?

Bipolar one versus two which is worse I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and I publish weekly videos on mental health and self-improvement. Today I'm going to be talking about the difference between bipolar one disorder and bipolar two disorder and address the common misconception that bipolar two is a milder form of bipolar one and therefore probably less of a problem. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder and it has two states: depressive episodes and hypomanic or manic episodes. And manic episodes are defined as the following and I'm going to read this because it's just too many words and it's taken from our Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the fifth edition. Here we go. A period of abnormally and persistent, elevated, expansive or irritable mood and abnormally and persistently increased activity lasting one week and present for most of the day, nearly every day. And then you have to have three of the following or four if your mood is irritable instead of elevated. Number one is inflated self-esteem or grandiosity - decreased need for sleep, more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking. Number four flight of ideas or racing thoughts, distractibility, increase in goal-directed activity or psychomotor agitation. You just can't stop doing things. Excessive involvement in activities that have a high potential for painful consequences such as things like going on buying sprees or getting involved in business investments. Sometimes people become hyper sexual. Also the symptoms caused clinically significant distress or impairment in various areas of your life not just one little area. Hypomania has the same symptoms except they only need to last for four days instead of a whole week. Another main difference is that with hypomania the symptoms don't cause any real impairment and in other words you're still pretty high-functioning. Now the second part of bipolar disorder would be to have depression or depressive episodes and I've talked in previous videos about depression and I'll put a link in the corner for you to reference Ii you want to watch that video. So bipolar one would be having episodes of mania and depression. Bipolar 2 would be episodes of depression and hypomania. If a person has delusions or any other psychotic symptoms, it's automatically considered mania versus hypomania because with hypomania there's no impairment. There's a good chance that if you have bipolar two disorder that you can go all of your life and never have never be put in the hospital because of your bipolar disorder. But with bipolar one, it's very hard, pretty uncommon for someone with bipolar one to never have a hospitalization because the manic episodes tend to be pretty destructive. Now knowing that, it's easy to conclude that bipolar one disorder is much worse than bipolar two because the manic episodes can cause a lot of problems. it's kind of like a tornado ripping through and then you've got to clean up all the damage. But the reason bipolar 2 is not merely a milder form of bipolar one disorder is because people with bipolar 2 tend to have a more chronic course to their illness. They also tend to spend more time depressed than the people with bipolar 1 so bipolar 1 may be more intense but bipolar 2 can be more chronic and persistent. Also the number of lifetime episodes of hypomania and depression tend to be more for the person with bipolar 2 then the person with bipolar 1. So did you get that? People with bipolar 2 tend to have a more recurring episodes of depression than the person with unipolar depression even. So in many ways although bipolar two disorder may be less intense when it comes to the mania at least, it can just create more overall dysfunction in the person's life because of the lingering and recurring depressive episodes. Now I said all this because I think in the past we as clinicians have tended to think of bipolar two disorder is not really that bad and that's kind of trickled down to patients in the way that they even think about their illness and may even feel like you don't really need to get treatment for it because it's just not that bad. And I think this is because we tend to focus on the intensity of the mania and seeing that as more the thing to keep under control but depression can be pretty debilitating and we're not talking about like a hypo depression there's no such thing. The person with bipolar disorder will have not as severe of a manic episode but they can have very severe depressive episodes so the depression is still can be a big problem. And a reason to continue in treatment and to maintain regular treatment to prevent the bottoming out episodes with a depression. And a good medication regimen can help reduce the overall burden of the illness by lessening the symptoms and maybe even decreasing the number of recurring episodes that you have over time. Thanks for watching. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or even if you don't have any questions leave me a comment just to say "hi."

Channel: Dr. Tracey Marks

Views: 447,740

Keywords: bipolar disorder 1 vs 2, bipolar disorder 1 and 2, bipolar disorder 1 mixed, bipolar disorder (disease or medical condition), bipolar disorder symptoms, bipolar disorder symptoms video, bipolar disorder type 1, bipolar 1 vs bipolar 2, bipolar 1 and 2, bipolar 1 versus 2, bipolar type 1, manic depression, mental health, mental illness (disease or medical condition), mental health channel, self-improvement, mental health education, dr. tracey marks

Id: ydLWlAqCpLA

Length: 6min 3sec (363 seconds)

Published: Wed May 30 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/OooooooOOoOOOther]

1 is worse because full blown mania is much more disruptive than hypomania. You are at risk of psychosis and fair more destructive behaviours. 2 is worse because there’s more depressive episodes. They are both worse.

[u/disgruntledpelican18]

Her videos are great! They helped me understand a lot about my disorder, and I’m able to educate those around me about it now too. If you haven’t watched her other videos, I highly recommend!

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