greeneyesandnotes Posted July 24, 2015 Posted July 24, 2015 Hi, The reason why I bring this up is that I believe I may have inherited the condition? My behaviour parallels with the symptoms of the condition and a close relative was diagnosed with it. Want to find out as much as possible? Thanks. http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/guide/bipolar-disorder-causes This like many other pages describes possible hormonal processes (not most scientific way to put it). Maybe what I meant to ask was what are the causes of it? Doctors still don't know the causes. I got carried away I think...maybe I will draw a line under this topic.
MagnumPI Posted July 24, 2015 Posted July 24, 2015 http://www.askgrace.ca/psychiatrist-creates-bipolar-disorder-epidemic-children-admits-receiving-16-million-drug-company-payoff/
Three Posted July 24, 2015 Posted July 24, 2015 Impaired Cognitive Empathy in Bipolar Disorder and in Patients with Ventromedial Prefrontal Lesions Cognitive empathy, or the ability to take another person's perspective, is closely related to (or even synonymous with)theory of mind, ...the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own. On the other hand, emotional or affective empathy is "emotional contagion" - the ability to mirror an emotional response observed in another person and to experience it vicariously. Dr. Simone Shamay-Tsoory and colleagues (2009a) have developed a model that distinguishes between the two types of empathy, which are represented by separate neuroanatomical systems (see figure below). Fig. 6 (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009a). Two separate systems for emotional and cognitive based empathy. Behaviourally, emotional empathy involves personal distress, empathic concern and emotion recognition. Anatomically the IFG [inferior frontal gyrus] appears to be responsible for emotional empathy. ... Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, involves perspective taking, the fantasy scale and theory of mind and is mediated by the VM [ventromedial prefrontal cortex]. Individuals with bipolar disorder can show deficits in social cognition and emotion regulation even in the euthymic(remitted) state (Green et al., 2007). These observation ledShamay-Tsoory et al. (2009b) to examine cognitive and emotional empathy in 19 euthymic patients with bipolar disorder and 20 matched control participants: The cognitive and affective aspects of empathic abilities were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactive Index. The Interpersonal Reactive Index includes four seven-item subscales, each tapping a different aspect of empathy: (a) the perspective taking subscale, which measures the reported tendency to adopt spontaneously the psychological point of view of others; (b) the fantasy subscale, measuring the tendency to imaginatively transpose oneself into fictional situations; © the empathic concern scale, measuring the tendency to experience feelings of sympathy and compassion for others; and (d) the personal distress scale assesses the tendency to experience distress and discomfort in response to others’ observed distress. The perspective-taking subscale was used as a measure of cognitive empathy, and the personal distress scale was used as a measure of emotional empathy. To assess theory of mind, the ability to detect faux pas was examined using a set of stories developed by Baron-Cohen et al. (1999). For example: James bought Richard a toy airplane for his birthday. A few months later, they were playing with it, and James accidentally dropped it. "Don't worry" said Richard, "I never liked it anyway. Someone gave it to me for my birthday." Questions after each faux pas and control passage assessed story comprehension, false belief (i.e., the speaker had a mistaken belief and not malicious intent), faux pas detection, and specific identification of the faux pas. Also tested were recognition of emotional expressions from the eyes, cognitive flexibility, and spatial planning abilities. The results indicated that the participants with bipolar disorder had lower scores than controls for cognitive empathy, but higher scores for emotional empathy. Figure 1 (Shamay-Tsoory et al. (2009b). Participant Empathy Scores. A similar effect was observed in the faux pas task, with the patients impaired on cognitive understanding, but not in affective understanding or in recognition of the faux pas. This agrees with prior studies on theory of mind in bipolar disorder (Malhi et al., 2008; Montag et al., 2009). On the other hand, the bipolar individuals showed completely intact performance on recognizing emotion in the eyes and in the spatial planning task. However, they had difficulty in set shifting and reversal learningin the cognitive flexibility task. And greater difficulty with reversal learning was associated with lower cognitive empathy scores, suggesting that cognitive inflexibility contributes to the deficiency in taking another's perspective. What does this mean? The present study results suggest that [the likelihood to engage in the process of reflecting on the viewpoint of others] is impaired in bipolar disorder. On the second affective scale, personal distress, the bipolar disorder group actually scored significantly higher than healthy comparison subjects... This indicates a greater tendency to have self-oriented feelings of anxiety and discomfort in response to tense interpersonal settings. .... ...[Their] exaggerated emotional response to others may be expressed in a dysfunctional empathic emotional overreaction (or “hyper empathy”). This notion is consistent with the “simulation” theory, according to which individuals impersonate others’ emotional mental states, using their own mental state. Thus, it may be hypothesized that bipolar disorder patients tend to engage in the “oversimulation” of others’ emotions, as reflected in high affective empathy, and as a result, they tend to misinterpret others’ mental states, which is reflected in impaired cognitive empathy and theory of mind. What are the brain systems that mediate such difficulties in those with bipolar disorder? Returning to the model in Figure 6 (above), Shamay-Tsoory et al. (2009a) associated emotional empathy with the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and cognitive empathy with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM). How did they determine such a clear dissociation? This was from another experiment that administered the same set of tests to a different population: neurological patients with fairly discrete lesions in each of those brain areas. Fig. 2 (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009a). Group and task (cognitive versus emotional empathy) interactions. Significant interaction between group and empathy type. Patients with VM lesions were impaired in cognitive empathy compared to the healthy controls (HC), patients with posterior lesions (PC) and patients with IFG lesions whereas patients with IFG lesions were impaired in emotional empathy compared to the HC, VM and the PC group. As with most things, though, the anatomical dissociation wasn't completely clean; there was some degree of overlap, as shown below. Fig. 5 (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009a). Location and overlap of brain lesions according to emotional versus cognitive empathy impairment-groups. (A) Lesions of the emotional-empathy-impaired group (n=6). Four patients had an IFG damage involving [brodmann] area 44, one had a VM damage and one had a PC damage. Chi-square analysis revealed that lesions involving area 44 were significantly more frequent in this group as compared to the non-impaired group. (B) Lesions of the cognitive-empathy-impaired group (n=7): five had VM damage involvingarea 10 and 11, one had an IFG damage and one had a PC damage. Chi-square analysis revealed that lesions involving area 10 and area 11 were significantly more frequent in this group as compared to the non-impaired group. Nonetheless, such human lesion studies can demonstrate the importance of specific brain areas for the cognitive or emotional processes in question, thereby illuminating the underlying neural network abnormalities in psychiatric disorders. References Baron-Cohen S, O'Riordan M, Stone V, Jones R, Plaisted K. (1999). Recognition of faux pas by normally developing children and children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.J Autism Dev Disord. 29:407-18. Green MJ, Cahill CM, Malhi GS. (2007). The cognitive and neurophysiological basis of emotion dysregulation in bipolar disorder. J Affect Disord. 103(1-3):29-42. Malhi GS, Lagopoulos J, Das P, Moss K, Berk M, Coulston CM. (2008). A functional MRI study of Theory of Mind in euthymic bipolar disorder patients. Bipolar Disord. 10:943-56. Montag C, Ehrlich A, Neuhaus K, Dziobek I, Heekeren HR, Heinz A, Gallinat J. (2009). Theory of mind impairments in euthymic bipolar patients. J Affect Disord. Sep 12. [Epub ahead of print]. Shamay-Tsoory, S., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Perry, D. (2009a). Two systems for empathy: a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions. Brain, 132 (3), 617-627 DOI:10.1093/brain/awn279 Shamay-Tsoory, S., Harari, H., Szepsenwol, O., & Levkovitz, Y. (2009b). Neuropsychological Evidence of Impaired Cognitive Empathy in Euthymic Bipolar Disorder. Journal of Neuropsychiatry, 21 (1), 59-67 DOI:10.1176/appi.neuropsych.21.1.59 Figure 2 (de Waal, 2008). The Russian doll model of empathy and imitation. Empathy (right) induces a similar emotional state in the subject and the object, with at its core the perception-action mechanism (PAM). The doll's outer layers, such as sympathetic concern and perspective-taking, build upon this hard-wired socio-affective basis. Sharing the same mechanism, the doll's imitation side (left) correlates with the empathy side. Here, the PAM underlies motor mimicry, coordination, shared goals, and true imitation. Even though the doll's outer layers depend on prefrontal functioning and an increasing self-other distinction, these outer layers remain connected to its inner core. There's probably a lot more to this topic, but I thought this was an interesting find and is very instructive on the topic of empathy in general. http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2009/12/impaired-cognitive-empathy-in-bipolar.html 1
webdever Posted July 24, 2015 Posted July 24, 2015 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-doesnt-kill-us/201111/trauma-and-psychosis http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Bipolar%20Illness.html There seems to be a lot of evidence that early childhood conditions are a much more significant factor than genetics in developing bipolar disorder. I would also question the idea that having one or more manic/depressive episodes means you have some 'disease' that is incurable and will require you to be on medications for the rest of your life. I was diagnosed bipolar and have had a couple manic episodes with mild psychosis. I can tell you the medications psychiatrists prescribe for bipolar disorder are horrible, and can have really awful side-effects and withdrawal symptoms. You would do much better, I think, to avoid medications and focus on therapy, diet, exercise, sleep... This thread has some good information, the Paleo and Primal Blueprint type diets I think are very good because refined sugar and grains as well as alcohol, caffeine, other drugs can trigger bipolar-type symptoms. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-pamela-peeke/bipolar-disorder_b_5578079.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2011/07/18/how-i-overcame-bipolar-ii/
greeneyesandnotes Posted July 25, 2015 Author Posted July 25, 2015 Ok...umm...let's take my time here Glad to see replies from people on here (To preface this post, I am going to say in a brief way that I believe that I do need to brush up on my Scientific method based skills and probably need to sharpen my reasoning skills.) Magnum PI - I might check out that video to see if it adds some new things to consider. Cheers dude. Joel Patterson - Thank you so much for the detailed studies. I'll try to find time for them. webdever - appreciate you sharing your perspectives on it as you were diagnosed as having Bipolar disorder. Sorry to hear about the manic episodes genuinely. I can relate to a lot that you say although I have to add that haven't been formerly diagnosed. Cheers everyone!
greeneyesandnotes Posted July 25, 2015 Author Posted July 25, 2015 Hi, Maybe I am not thinking things through and indeed I am hoping for someone to give reasons or info, as to why, despite the information described in the "There Is No Such Thing as Mental Illness" video (which gives a case for the idea that Biologically based mental illnesses have not been discovered) That there are detailed studies around by scientists about Bipolar disorder?
greeneyesandnotes Posted July 25, 2015 Author Posted July 25, 2015 MagnumPI – I've just watched the video (There Is No Such Thing As Mental Illness) and the case for their being no biologically based or physically based mental condition is strong and well researched in my view. The thought that has come to me is that I probably don't have Bipolar disorder, as it seems probable that Bipolar disorder (like other biologically based mental conditions) do not exist. Ofc, I have to think, why did I have behaviours that paralleled depressive and hypomanic symptoms found in bipolar disorder? One possible idea that has just come to me is that at the time (mid teens when I first felt depressed/anxious strongly for several months) is that these symptoms which started during the mid teens could have been the result of hormonal brain changes and development that occurs at that age? I think I need to really try hard to examine my past and what has happened in my life so far? (currently, I believe it would benefit us all to do this) Need a cup of tea and a mountain of biscuits right now. 1
MagnumPI Posted July 25, 2015 Posted July 25, 2015 It's a long, hard road but the good news is: You're in the right place. What a philosopher will call a reason or contributing factor, a drug dealer will call symptoms. For me, at least, I first found solace in knowing that perhaps I belonged to a group of similarly diagnosed damaged people. "The easy way out". Not my fault, I'm ill or damaged or whatever. But then playing victim is exhausting in itself and it's just plain not true so that's not conducive to a fulfilling life. Then, finding the truth and examining my past and the leading conditions for my behavior, thoughts and feelings led me here. Here, being Freedomain and with it a better understanding of the whole mess. With an empathetic group structure, or at the very least, people with similar feelings to relate to.Obviously, brain damage exists. And dopamine levels(amongst other chemicals and brain activity) drop more, aren't produced as much in certain people. But then it just comes down to do you want to paint over that with mind altering chemicals that will harm you, or can you keep it together long enough to pinpoint the problems, fix them, and then start to progress? Studies exist, and as evidenced above, the real hard evidence linking the brain scans is the shakiest part. The meat of the similarities lies in behavior. Which is to say, circumstantial. Or non-existent if you just want to cut the shit. The big monkey in this wrench is:http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/life-as-a-nonviolent-psychopath/282271/ Fallon immediately orders the technician to double check the code. But no mistake has been made: The brain scan that mirrors those of the psychopaths is his own. So, this brainscan stuff regarding behavior is just too shaky at this point in science to really work. I'd urge you to call Stefan, honestly, if you haven't already, and most urgently if you don't have anyone to talk to about all this. 1
Snafui Posted July 26, 2015 Posted July 26, 2015 I put up a post that might give some perspective on why they are not diseases but natural responses to the environment one is in. Summary of these traits would be beneficial: Now we need to look at those things listed and see how they are useful: Let’s picture a world of pre-history, pre-civilization, your tribe is under attack and you have certain members that can take on a threat with heightened senses, heightened reflexes, little need for sleep or recovery, they control the urge to flee, they become empowered to fight anything in front of them to the point of death. They feel invincible. They fight while everyone else gets to safety. This is a matter of survival. Do you understand why they have such a need for recovery after the event? Also, keep in mind this would be short term and not for months, or years, on end—that’s where modern society has caused such an issue. (Note: sex helps most bipolar people recover; how much of a hero would they be?)
greeneyesandnotes Posted July 27, 2015 Author Posted July 27, 2015 Yes Magnum PI. I also found solace in thinking I was part of a group that had Bipolar disorder. I can definitely relate to that. I am not sure if it is the easy way out or playing the victim though but I could be wrong. It's interesting, right? That phenomenon of feeling special or blessed or "different" if you are part of a certain group. What comes to mind now is that I related to some of the things said on websites describing Bipolar disorder which said things like... "You feel more deeply" or "You understand more the human experience" or "several great writers and actors suffered from the condition". What shocks me with these things in general though is that once the evidence and rational arguments have been presented in clear light. I could have spent my whole finite life to the end not knowing the arguments. The aim is to live with rationality and I am still working on it. Snafui - I'll have a read of that post. Thanks. 2
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