Bipolar w/o Mania?

Sorry for late post, but I found additional information:

"This is strange, you are saying to yourself. "I thought bipolar disorder was distinguished from 'unipolar' depression by the presence of some degree of hypomania. Don't you have to have some hypomania in order to be bipolar? How could it be 'bi' - polar if there is no other pole!?"

But Dr. Ghaemi and colleagues assert that there are versions of depression that end up acting more like bipolar disorder, even though there is no hypomania at all that we can detect (or, as in item #9, only when an antidepressant has been used). These conditions often do not respond well, in the long run, to antidepressant medications (which "poop out" or actually start making things worse). They respond better to the medications we routinely rely on in bipolar disorder, the "mood stabilizers" you'll be introduced to in the Treatment section of this website (including several non-medication approaches). And these patients have other folks in their family with bipolar disorder or something that looks rather more like that (e.g. dramatic "mood swings", even if the person never really gets ill enough to need treatment). "

Depression, Bipolar II - Diagnosis

This article also has a link to the original article by Dr. Ghaemi.

Thanks, but wouldn't these different type of depressions just fall under the depression spectrum then?


I'm not really questioning you, just thinking out loud.


Going by responses to meds aren't really helpful as mood stabilizers are in essence epilepsy meds, sooo, that method doesn't really hold much if any weight at all.


Idk, I just call a spade a spade, and if your problem is depression, then doesn't make sense calling it bipolar just because it doesn't present in a typical fashion.


Idk, like I said, just thinking out loud, because this makes no sense to me, having bipolar without any of the bi...

I agree. But this certainly provides a different perspective. I think we can agree that depression sometimes can be helped by mood stabilizers. But to call it bipolar? I do not know about that! Still, allot of doctors medicate the symptoms irrespective of diagnosis. So maybe the label does not necessarily lead to much of a consequence. I am just thinking out loud here.

My hypomania is usually minimal to the point that I can actively focus it on specific tasks leading to previously established long-term goals. What could be thought of as relatively normal - which it really isn't as its too dysfunctional to qualify - is more like a mild persistent depression; emotionally numbed, difficulty focusing, often lots of other stuff.

Recently I believe I've figured out how to be quite close to normal, actually stable in a real sense, but I'm so unfamiliar with it, have spent so much of my life depressed or hypo, that psychologically I'm prone to responses which lead to depressing viewpoints and things that I enjoy trigger responses that seem hypomanic in terms of the level of enjoyment.

I think it's as much how my brain is wired, my neurologic response to certain stimuli, as it is any other factor at this point. I will have to relearn motivation, desire, attentiveness; so much that it is truly daunting, but at least now understood.

It's all very complicated which makes it difficult to differentiate between mood and disorder.