Good afternoon, everyone. It's Dr. Niagara again, our next episode of Psychology Unplugged.

As always, thank you to all of our followers here in the United States and abroad.

It's with much appreciation and gratitude that bringing this program on a weekly basis with the goal of

legitimizing, destigmatizing, mental health, giving it the importance

that it deserves and try to provide as much education as we can. So today's topic is going to be

one that I've noticed in people reaching out and not sure why, but then revisit bipolarity.

And this is a common, very common referral question that I get in terms of doing a neuropsychie bowel is does this person

have bipolar disorder? And it's a really important referral question and distinction to make

because there's a lot of confusion about bipolarity, which used to be called manic depressive disorder, the two poles,

one being mania or hypomania, the other being major depressive disorder or just depression.

So it's also a term or a disorder, I think, that is used inappropriately in social media and in couples arguing, you know, oh, you're so bipolar.

And it really, you know, takes away from the

seriousness of this because bipolar is a serious medical, medical and psychiatric condition.

It also has one of the highest heritability indices of all the psychiatric conditions, meaning if somebody in your family is

accurately diagnosed with bipolar, a first degree relative is significantly, it has significantly

elevated risk of developing bipolarity. But to truly understand it is to, you know, there's a lot of symptom overlap.

You know, it could look like borderline personality.

Many it could look like amphetamine-induced psychosis.

It could look like, you know, severe combined forms of ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, depression.

And I'm talking more about anxiety and like panic, in more of the manic symptoms.

So I want to clarify, you know, bipolar is, one, a legitimate diagnosis.

It does manifest in children and adolescents in terms of, you know, pediatric bipolarity.

...