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Patients with ‘bipolar disorder’ in Britain experience a delay in diagnosis

Experts said people infected with Bbipolar disorder They wait long periods of time to be diagnosed and this exposes them to the wrong treatments.

The mental health condition affecting writer and television host Stephen Fry and actress Catherine Zeta-Jones also results in extreme mood swings that can outweigh many people’s experiences of feeling happy or depressed.

More than a million people are estimated to have bipolar disorder in the UK, yet most spend years either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. Many of them are diagnosed with depression and spend years taking antidepressants, while mainstream treatments like lithium and lamotrigine are of little use.

In a new report, the Bipolar Commission said young people are twice as likely to develop bipolar disorder as others, with symptoms of the disorder generally appearing between the ages of 15 and 25, with many being diagnosed with depression. or adolescent anxiety by “completely ignoring” a diagnosis. Bipolar.

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Other reasons for the delay in diagnosis, according to the report, could be a shortage of psychiatric staff and an inability to ask patients about previous bouts of hypomanic episodes (a state of mind characterized by persistent euphoria and disinhibition) and patients avoiding to diagnose bipolar disorder due to stigma.

Overall, people face “major” delays in diagnosis, with an average wait of nine-and-a-half years, says the report, which brings together other industry experts and academics.

Meanwhile, one to two out of three people with the disorder say they’ve attempted suicide as a result of this delay, while people who aren’t accurately diagnosed are more likely to end up with repeat visits. for the hospital.

Study data indicates that 56% of people with bipolar disorder have not been diagnosed, while 60% do not receive disorder-specific treatment or support.

According to the report, the current method of care – in which they have access to a general practitioner but are only referred to a psychiatrist if absolutely necessary – is unworkable.

Professor Guy Goodwin, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Oxford University and co-chair of the Bipolar Committee, said in a nutshell: ‘Our conclusion is that the symptomatic care patients receive is useless. Psychiatric services diagnose patients only when the condition is severe, but once they recover, they are referred to the general practitioner, and that model of care we say is useless.”

He added: ‘There is a significant lack of description of some of the treatments that we would like to see more used than they are now, and this includes the gold standard treatment, which is lithium, as there is evidence that its use is of advantage for a patient with bipolar.”

According to the study, bipolar disorder costs the UK economy around £20 billion ($23.8 billion) a year and accounts for 17 per cent of the total burden of mental patients, while depression accounts for 23 per cent.

The report included more than 100 face-to-face interviews and more than 700 survey responses of people with bipolar disorder.

The study also indicates that having bipolar disorder increases the risk of suicide by 20 times and that five percent of suicides occurred by people with the disorder. Relapses were high, with the report indicating that 98% of patients surveyed relapsed at least once and 52% were hospitalised.

Despite the setbacks, a third of respondents said they had not received any psychological therapy or support to reduce the setbacks.

Bipolar disorder has also been found to impact obesity, with 44 percent of respondents with bipolar disorder also suffering from obesity by Health Standards, which is much higher than the national average.

Experts have stressed that in order to shorten the time frame to diagnosis, screening for bipolar disorder should be available within NHS primary and secondary care, alongside specialist training in researching the condition.

“Patients with bipolar disorder ask only for something very simple: a doctor who knows them and is an expert on bipolar disorder and will continue to work with them for years to manage the condition well,” the experts added.

It’s possible that not getting enough sleep is a trigger for bipolar disorder, although the condition is thought to be hereditary. It’s also possible that the situation is exacerbated by some childhood abuse or neglect experience.

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