When are mood swings considered an illness?
Everyone experiences fluctuations in mood. Indeed, mood can vary according to situations or events we face. These variations are considered “normal” as long as they don’t impair a person’s life.
However, sometimes these mood changes or swings are particularly severe, long-lasting, incapacitating, and intensify every time they recur.
We label them “mood disorders” when these fluctuations become so significant that they interfere in a person’s life and require medical treatment to help keep them under control.
Such mood changes are considered as illness and therefore termed “pathological”. If this is the case, fluctuations and imbalances with respect to moods, activities, and thoughts are severe and may be incapacitating.
Essentially, mood disorders include Unipolar disorders (depression) and "Bipolar" disorders, the latter formerly termed “manic depressive psychosis” or “manic depression”.
Bipolar disorders are characterised by alternating episodes of depression and mania (elation, psychological and physical excitability, excessive euphoria). How it is outwardly expressed will vary according to severity, duration, and clinical characteristics.
Depressive episodes are identified by symptoms similar to those of other forms of depression, including but not limited to extreme and lasting sadness, loss of interest in all things, irritability, sleep disturbances, lack of energy, memory loss and difficulty concentrating, changes in eating habits, and thoughts of death and suicide.
Manic or hypomanic episodes (milder form) are identified by euphoric mood, disproportionately increased and lasting energy, hyperactivity bordering on excessive restlessness, and an overestimation of self or abilities. The need for sleep decreases to just a few hours without feeling tired, sexual appetite increases, and judgment may be impaired causing an inability to recognize that there is a problem, particularly with respect to the abnormal state of mind.
Bipolarity will often include all levels of mood, from severe depression (melancholic spell) to extreme elation (manic spell), with everything in between, including mild depression, or periods of normal moods. Depressive spells require special attention from family and friends because the severity of the depression is such that there is a high risk of suicide. Manic spells are sometimes expressed through episodes of such agitation that those afflicted may end up at a police station or hospitalized before being redirected to a doctor.
Current situation
Unipolar disorders, otherwise known as depression, have been the subject of many information campaigns and are now better understood by the general public and better controlled by health professionals.
Bipolar disorders, on the other hand, are still misunderstood by the general public and even some health professionals. Late diagnosis and inappropriate treatment are still quite common. Quite often only depressive episodes are identified and treated; hypomanic episodes, for example, may remain unidentified and untreated for a much longer period.
Reader information: This article is based on discussions and texts from the Medical Comitee – Last update
: 10/01/2011
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