Rafael Uribe Listening/speaking 7 Activity Log 17 July 2012 Bipolar disorder This was the second psychological lecture

I went. The room was smaller and the teacher spokes very slow and weak. The topic was very interesting. My mother is a psychiatrist so she sees this kind of disorder very often. The lecture started differentiating the kind of depression that exists. Depression is a normal human emotion. The problem is when this depression stays or is recurrent because it becomes difficult to answer why is the person depressed. There is also the clinical depression that has biological component plus psychological components. Then the teacher spoke about the bipolar disorder. There are two kind of bipolar disorder: bipolar 1 and bipolar 2. The first one is more severe and it is considered that someone has bipolar disorder only if has had one major manic episode. While being manic the individual feels very happy and joyful, nothing can hurt him and has a lot of energy. It can last four days, but after that the person will feel very depressed. While being in the manic episode, the family treasures are in great danger because it is likely that the individual will make bad decisions and expend all the family money. Not all the manic attacks lead to depression, but it is very common. Bipolar type two is a little different, because the manic attack is least extreme. The individual become very creative but he is still away from reality, and does not sleep enough. The person becomes very productive and a lot of people

can live with this disorder. Many famous people have admitted to suffer of bipolar disorder type two. Bipolar disorder seems to be equal in every country, that is, there is no race or ethnicity that have more propensities to have the disorder. The percentage seems to be also equal and the men and women are equally likely to have it. It is also different from major depression, but bipolar disorder generates depression, but both are different. Bipolar disorder has a chemical component. There is a study on identical twins to prove if there was only genetically suffered. The result proves that the genetics it is not all when trying to explain the bipolar disorder because the likelihood of the second brother to suffer bipolar disorder is only of 40%. The genetics are relevant but are not all the explanation. We finished talking about how to diagnose psychical diseases because it is impossible to read the peoples mind and therefore is impossible to know the degree of the symptoms. Either way, there are attempts to universalize the diagnostic of certain diseases. Not every country has their own, but they should because the problems and intensity vary from cultures. Also we talked about some tests that can be used to understand how people thinks, but there is not a very good or accurate one.