Manic depressive disorder is not much different from recurring depression, at least in how it is effectively treated.
Psychiatrists and psychologists argued for a reclassification of most mood disorders based on how often they recur rather than the particular symptoms of each disease. Kay Redfield Jamison of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and George Washington University?s Dr. Frederick Goodwin presented this view based on findings from 17 years of research and studies during the 21st annual Mood Disorders Symposium at Johns Hopkins University Tuesday. Their book, “Manic Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression,” was published in a second edition this year.
“There?s a huge amount of science and a tremendous amount of progress in understanding bipolar disorder,” since the first edition came out in 1990, Jamison said. “It?s a bad illness to have, but a good time to have it.”
About 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6 percent of the population age 18 and over, have bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder is a brain disorder that causes severe, unusual shifts in a person?s mood, energy and ability to function.
Goodwin said current classification of bipolar disorder and recurring depression treats them as different diseases and results in misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment.
Recurrent depression, also called unipolar disorder because it lacks manic intervals, is treated the same as people who have had one or two bouts of depression in their lives, he said, though the illnesses are drastically different.
Someone with multiple depressive episodes that first manifested in their early 20s likely will respond well to the same medical and clinical treatment as someone with bipolar disorder, Goodwin said.
“Lithium is anti-cyclic, not just anti-bipolar,” he said.
