Rapid Cycling and Mixed States
Unstable mood and energy marks the life of a person with Bipolar Disorder. People with such instability have big changes in their mood, or energy, or creativity over time. They may have easy crying . They may have extreme episodes of anger. They can sometimes have inappropriate laughing too loud or too long.
Unstable mood and energy marks the life of a person with Bipolar Disorder. People with such instability have big changes in their mood, or energy, or creativity over time. They may have easy crying . They may have extreme episodes of anger. They can sometimes have inappropriate laughing too loud or too long.
Mixed states include only phases of full manic and full depressive cycles as short as 4 days.
Other combinations of depression and hypomania, or mania exist but not the two full phases together. And it is possible to have cycles shorter than 4 days.
For a lot of people, there are no phases of normal functioning (or very brief ones); instead, many people have only symptoms, varying from one kind to another.
Symptoms vary separately from one another, and at different rates.
Bipolar disorder is supposed to have phases lasting at least 4 days shorter than that, and it doesn't fit the official model. But the shorter versions are seen so often they have their own names.
Many people with Bipolar II do not have the intervals, in between periods of having symptoms that are often spoken about Bipolar I disorder.
A rapid cycling of the individual symptoms, at different rates, can create a varying pattern of nearly continuous symptoms. Instead of having identifiable episodes, the person has almost constantly shifting symptom phases that blend into one another.
