Open AccessAre we Overdiagnosing Bipolar Disorder?
Author(s) -
M S Reddy,
Starlin M. Vijay,
Swetha Reddy
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
indian journal of psychological medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 0975-1564
pISSN - 0253-7176
DOI - 10.4103/ijpsym.ijpsym_419_17
Subject(s) - overdiagnosis , bipolar disorder , psychiatry , depression (economics) , spectrum disorder , psychology , medicine , mood , pathology , economics , macroeconomics
Bipolar disorder (BD) is an established diagnostic entity used by clinicians for over a century. It is distinguished by the distinct manic and depressive episodes with interepisode euthymia. It has an illness course where both recovery and recurrences are a rule and has a good long-term prognosis, as reported earlier by Emil Kraeplin. There is an opinion in the current literature that BD is often underdiagnosed as unipolar depression, and based on that opinion, spectrum concept was introduced. Here, we present 5 cases to highlight that overdiagnosis of BD is also not infrequent and we discuss its reasons and therapeutic implications.