What Are The Criteria For Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder, like many other mental health disorders that have received wide public exposure, has received a near exponential increase in diagnoses in proportion to its publicity. This is not uncommon for previously unknown disorders when they hit the mainstream. Public knowledge does two things: it helps those who were previously in ignorance of the facts they needed to get help for their condition, and it also leads to a fluctuation in false claims and misdiagnoses. There is continuing controversy over the number of bipolar diagnoses among children and teenagers, for example.

Many mental health practitioners feel that doctors are not cautious enough in giving young people the label of bipolar. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder made by a psychiatrist using the DSM guide can easily be mistaken. This is because it relies on certain generic criteria for its diagnosis; for example, impulsivity, grandiosity, mood cycles, risk taking and promiscuous sexuality, among others. None of these are unusual phases in teenagers, nor should they be understood as lasting personality features. In fact, subsuming them under the label of bipolar can only entrench this sense of identity and even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This kind of mistaken labeling can greatly damage the subject’s wellbeing as they are destined to live under a false identity.

Cynics suggest that the psychiatric industry is endlessly coming up with new buzzwords for disorders previously unheard of, in order to boost the psychiatric drug market. Such uproar resulted from the recent suggestion to add Disruptive Mood Disregulation Disorder (DMDD) to the DSM manual – the official guide from which psychiatrists make their diagnoses. Some psychologists have earnestly argued that it is yet another needless addition to the manual which suggests criteria they have to force disruptive patients to fit into. The worst part of it is that DMDD is a diagnosis particularly aimed at childhood disorders. If misdiagnosed, children will have to grow up with the pressure of a stigma that doesn’t even accurately fit them, and it is likely that misapplied treatment for this will cause real damage to their mental wellness.