Experts said that people with bipolar disorder wait too long to be diagnosed and this exposes them to the wrong treatment.
The mental health condition that affects writer and broadcaster Stephen Fry and actress Catherine Zeta-Jones also results in extreme mood swings that may exceed many people’s experiences of feeling happy or depressed.
It is estimated that more than a million people suffer from bipolar disorder in the UK, but most spend years misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. Many of them are diagnosed with depression and spend their years taking antidepressants, while the main treatments such as lithium and lamotrigine are of little use.
In a new report, the Bipolar Commission said that young people are twice as likely to develop bipolar disorder as others, with symptoms of the disorder generally appearing between the ages of 15 and 25, with many being diagnosed with teenage depression or anxiety “completely ignoring” a diagnosis. Bipolar.
read more
This section contains related articles, placed in the (Related Nodes field)
Among other reasons for the delay in diagnosis, according to the report, may be the shortage in the staff of psychiatrists and the failure to ask patients about previous periods of hypomanic episodes (a mood characterized by persistent euphoria and disinhibition) and patients avoiding diagnosing bipolar disorder due to stigma.
Overall, people face “serious” delays in diagnosis, with an average wait of nine-and-a-half years, said the report, which brings together other experts and academics in the field.
Meanwhile, one or two out of three people with the disorder say they have attempted suicide because of this delay, while people who are not accurately diagnosed are more likely to end up with repeated hospital visits.
Figures from the study indicate that 56 percent of people with bipolar disorder have not been diagnosed, while 60 percent do not receive specific treatment or support for the disorder.
According to the report, the current method of treatment – in which they have access to a general practitioner but are referred to a psychiatrist only if absolutely necessary – is impractical.
Professor Guy Goodwin, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford and co-chair of the Bipolar Committee, said in a nutshell: “Our conclusion is that the symptomatic care patients receive is of no use. Psychiatric services only diagnose patients when the condition is severe, but Once they recover, they are referred to the GP, and that model of care we say is useless.”
He added, “There is a significant lack of description of some of the treatments that we would like to see more used than it is now, and this includes the gold standard treatment, which is lithium, as there is evidence that its use is of benefit to a patient with bipolar.”
According to the study, bipolar disorder costs the British economy around £20 billion ($23.8 billion) annually and represents 17 percent of the total burden of mental patients, while depression accounts for 23 percent.
The report included more than 100 face-to-face interviews and more than 700 survey responses from people with bipolar disorder.
The study also indicates that having bipolar disorder increases the risk of suicide 20 times and that five percent of suicides occurred by people with the disorder. Relapses were high, with the report indicating that 98 percent of the patients surveyed had relapsed at least once, and 52 percent were hospitalized.
Despite the setbacks, a third of those surveyed said that they did not receive any psychological therapies nor did they receive support to reduce the setbacks.
Bipolar disorder has also been found to have an impact on obesity, with 44 percent of those surveyed with bipolar disorder also suffering from obesity by health standards, which is much higher than the national average.
Experts emphasized that in order to reduce the time period for diagnosis, screening for bipolar disorder should be available within primary and secondary care in the NHS, in addition to specialized training in finding the condition.
“Bipolar disorder patients are only asking for something very simple – a doctor who knows them and is an expert in bipolar disorder and will continue to work with them for years to manage the condition well,” the experts added.
It is possible that not getting enough sleep is a trigger for bipolar disorder, although the condition is thought to be hereditary. It is also possible that the situation is exacerbated by some childhood abuse or neglect experience.