Bipolar 2 is usually considered less of a problem than bipolar 1 and in the respect that less physical harm occurs to oneself and others due to a person having bipolar 2 that would be true. However in my opinion it is the more difficult diagnosis to live with. It involves mostly major depression with periods of more normal or happy moods and with some people some hypomania (hypomania is a feeling described as delusions of grandeur but in bipolar 2 it isn't so fancy. While one's confidence goes waaaay up there are no psychotic features for people with bipolar 2 - also meaning that the hypomania is chemical in nature not due to circumstance and that it is a more happy more productive state of being. With bipolar 1 sometimes hypomania includes delusions of grandeur sometimes just like with bipolar 2 one is more happy and productive). The reason it is the more difficult to live with is that depression is hands down the worst state of being a person can experience in this lifetime. Of course there are levels of depression but for many it runs so deep they see no reason to go on living and find nothing enjoyable, are in constant pain both mentally and physically and well there aren't enough words to describe just how awful depression is. Let me give an example that might help one understand just how bad: I have a friend who had a very, very difficult pregnancy involving daily shots in the stomach and back, a feeling of itching everywhere but no ability to scratch it plus inability to eat anything besides peanut butter and frozen yogurt and had to force that down to get as many calories as the dr wanted plus she was bed-bound throughout. She also had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lymph nodes and so had all sex organs removed, did the full on chemotherapy plus radiation, had only a 25% chance of making it but now is cancer free but living with many consequences brought on by chemo and radiation. In her estimation it goes like this - cancer is the easiest to handle then the pregnancy but the worst out of the bunch and by quite a landslide (she could work pregnant and with cancer both but not with depression) is depression which is just 100% pain 100% of the time. It truly is unlivable and disables people and many instead think these folks merely have character flaws - despite having previously been the polar opposite of lazy and not lacking in character and after the depression ends goes back to ambitious and productive - therefore those who think that way are merely ignorant of the facts.
Bipolar one is quite different in that there must have been at least one event of psychosis (full blown mania - the latin here is hypo - less hyper - more and thus when one says hypomania they mean just shy of mania) to qualify for that diagnosis and the moods tend to fluctuate more often and more wildly going from super extreme highs to super extreme lows. The reason it is more dangerous is because more people who are diagnosed bipolar 1 cause themselves and others harm (not on purpose but when one is psychotic one loses all sense of who they are or what is actually going down and so mistakes in judgment occur that can have deadly or costly consequences - for example they are more likely to just up and leave town for parts unknown without telling anyone or more likely to waaaay overspend money or more likely to come on to strangers - just everything is amplified. When you add psychotic features that doesn't mean all folks with bipolar 1 disorder have in fact at least once been psychotic but means that the person being described goes through psychotic episodes with much greater frequency than folks without that addendum to the diagnosis.
Bipolar 1 disorder symptoms are the following:
extreme mood changes (not based on one's thoughts or circumstances but to brain chemicals gone haywire)
eating or sleeping too much or too little
lack of inhibitions
being overly sexualized
poor decision making skills
inability to do chores like house cleaning banking etc near as competently as a person without the diagnosis
tendency to be lacking in good hygene
at least one incidence of psychosis
tendency to overspend
unpredictable behavior
antidepressants can make things worse (unlike in bipolar 2) as it can bring on mania (psychosis)
a tendancy to self medicate or give up on all their meds
It is a lifelong illness but one can learn how better to manage the disease with work, time, patience and perseverance.
PTSD - mostly means you become triggered when in similar situations of a trauma one has been unable to process and get past - for instance I have been misdiagnosed several times by doctors and treated unfairly even cruelly by doctors and now whenever I go to the dr I get anxiety so severe my BP goes up to tachychardic right there in the doctors office having been as high as 179 over 113 and forced to stay until I could calm myself enough to bring it down to where it is not dangerously high - therefore symptoms that occurerd in the first trauma/s still occurring even if the doctor has done nothing wrong - kinda like Pavlov's dogs one has been conditioned to react with panic in similar circumstances as well as paranoia and even avoidance (just plain skipping putting yourself in that position again - hard to live life avoiding such things that most consider normal experiences). PTSD can also be marked by nightmares or night terrors (one wakes unable to move for several minutes but still experiencing great fear and a halfway dream-like state but remembered well because no longer truly asleep). Also one can have flashbacks that trick your mind into believing one is actually in the terrifying/traumatic circumstance yet again - sometimes many many times over.
DID - it used to be called MPD (multiple personality disorder) but it has been found one can disassociate without adding another personality but often forgetting large periods of time where they were frightened or stressed enough to remove oneself psychologically from the situation and in such a way it isn't really happening to that person and they generally don't remember what happened but to others the person has in no way actually manifested a different personality. The problem with this diagnosis is that missing chunks of time one can forget whole people and certainly many encounters. It is embarrassing to have to admit no I don't remember that (or say to someone I am sorry but I can't recall having met you) and some people take offense even when pointed out that memory problems are due to a disease and are not at all personal whatsoever.
People with bipolar 1 tend to experience just about every mental illness - complaints from panic attacks to social anxiety to paranoia to schizophrenic type hallucinations and delusions, major depression, bouts of mania and hypomania, etc. Schizoaffective disorder is when one is suffering both schizophrenia and a mood disorder, commonly bipolar.
Panic attacks do feel like you are on the verge of death and can over time actually rob years from your life because of that much stress. Marked by difficulty breathing, tunnel vision, increased BP, paranoia and chest pain.
Social anxiety is just like it sounds as is paranoia and rage - all this exaggerated in bipolar disorder.
Psychology primer over for the time being :)
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