As a mental health advocate, functional medicine practitioner, and someone who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18, there is a frequently used phrase about bipolar that makes me crazy.

When someone says, “he is bipolar” or “she is bipolar” or “she’s acting bipolar,” I’ll likely get pretty defensive pretty fast. Bipolar disorder is NOT a personality trait. 

Mental health awareness is important, but current awareness and discourse sometimes comes at the expense of the over-identification of our personality with symptoms of an illness.

You don’t say “she IS diabetes” or “she IS depression” or “she IS rheumatoid arthritis.” For some reason, bipolar disorder is the only diagnosis and physical illness that becomes an identity statement and personality trait.

A lot of people who use that phrasing don’t understand that for most people with bipolar disorder, they’re not having constant mood swings. They may have one or two mood episodes a year. For example, in the past, I tended to get depressed in the late fall and winter and then I would head into hypomania/mania in the spring/summer. Some of that was triggered by trauma, diet, poor lifestyle choices, and substances. Even the wrong  medication caused psychosis and hallucinations in me. (Yes, prescribed medication made my symptoms worse, which isn’t discussed enough.)

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder rooted in many physiological issues that causes fluctuating episodes of mania or hypomania (which is milder than mania) and depression. Episodes can last several days to weeks, and between episodes there may be seasons of stability. Mania and depression are broken down by the following symptoms below.

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