As the second semester starts, my schedule placed me in Psychology class. And since I am very interested in different psychological disorders and I'm trying to expand my knowledge of different scientific articles, I decided to read an article on a disorder. This article discussed the mood disorder bipolar disorder. In this article, the author, Shreeya Nanda, who is the head writer of medwire, talks about the large number of people with bipolar disorder with atypical symptoms. The criteria is a patient showing two or more symptoms not normal to bipolar under the DSM-IV. The study, done in China, found that 11.8% of people with bipolar show atypical symptoms. That number jumps up to 33.8% when the patients take antidepressants. Since many people in China with bipolar are treated with antidepressants for their depressive states, they begin to show symptoms.
The article makes the argument that the treatment of bipolar patients in China makes it worse for the patients. There is no scientific evidence that antidepressants help bipolar patients. In fact, antidepressants might make the bipolar disorder worse. According to the article, antidepressants raise the likelihood of a person to develop atypical symptoms. With the development of atypical symptoms, the patient will no longer be able to be treated under the DSM-IV. The treatment might actually be hurting the patients. The argument of the essay is that China needs to start treating their patients better. Instead of putting the people with bipolar on antidepressants, they need to start using more modern and up-to-date methods of treatment. The article also claims the need for better education of Chinese physicians on mental disorders like bipolar. Maybe we as American citizens also need to be better educated on matters of mental disorders too.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150130/Atypical-features-common-in-bipolar-disorder-subtypes-associated-with-therapy.aspx
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