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Disease Symptom Tips :: Bipolar Test
Bipolar Test: Is There a Test for Bipolar Disorder?
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There is no magic bipolar test to check for Bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is not single disease or disorder - rather it's a blanket term to cover an entire category or range of mood disorders.
These mood disorders are often characterized by manic episodes, elevated moods followed by fatigue and depression, or even psychotic episodes that include hallucinations or delusions.
Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder
A diagnosis of bipolar disorder is typically based on the patient's own reports of their behavior or reports from family, friends or peers. These are then paired with the signs observed by nurses, psychologists or other medical professionals.
To be diagnosed, an individual must meet a certain list of requirements.
Tests to Determine Bipolar Disorder
Though a medical professional may administer a psychological bipolar test, weighing the patient's symptoms against various criteria for diagnosing the disease, there is no single bipolar test. There is also no biological test for determining whether a patient has bipolar disorder.
However, there are certain tests that should be run on a patient before diagnosing them as a way of ruling out potential medical illnesses that may be causing mental or psychological symptoms. These include testing for TSH levels, doing a full blood count and conducting a brain scan to check for possible tumors or lesions.
While there are no biological tests to diagnose bipolar disorder, there have been recent developments in brain scanning for common patterns.
In 2005, the Mayo Clinic announced that it was working on a method that uses magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) to see and identify specific patterns of metabolic activity that are common to bipolar disorder patients.
Misdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorders
There are several diseases that are commonly mistaken for bipolar disorder. These include schizoaffective disorder, drug abuse, drug-induced psychosis, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.
Classification of Bipolar Disorder
Once diagnosed with various clinical and psychological tests, bipolar disorders are often classified into one of four classifications. These include:
Bipolar I: In this category, the patient has experienced at least one manic episode that may or may not have been followed by a bout of depression.
Bipolar II: Bipolar II is identified by more hypomanic episodes than typical manic episodes. The patient must have also exhibited at least one major depressive episode. Hypomanic episodes are often not as extreme or debilitating as manic episodes.
Cyclothymia: Cyclothymia is characterized by hypomanic episodes and depressive episodes that are not major. For example, the patient experiences hypomanic episodes alongside depressive episodes, but those depressive episodes aren't debilitating.
Bipolar-NOS: NOS stands for Not Otherwise Specified and refers to an as-of-yet unclassified bipolar disorder that does not fit into the other three conventional categories of bipolar disorders.
For this diagnosis, a traditional psychological bipolar test may not be as effective as a customized evaluation of the patient.
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