Thing: (from Merriam-Webster online)
3 a: a separate and distinct individual quality, fact, idea, or usually entity
b: the concrete entity as distinguished from its appearances
c: a spatial entity
d: an inanimate object distinguished from a living being
In a nutshell, "thing" as defined here, is characterized by having a specific location (objective.) To illustrate, the brain has a specific location (objective.) The mind does not (subjective.)
Bipolar Disorder is a set of criteria agreed upon by a body of adequate interpretors. Bipolar Disorder is a description of a constellation of symptoms. It is not a thing. Just like a relationship is not a thing. Treat your relationships like they are things and see how well they work.
If the quality of one's life improves after the label is applied GREAT.
If the quality of one's life gets worse after the label is applied then it is not a useful label.
(Sometimes suffering is relieved and the quality of life improves by being undiagnosed.)
As a psychiatrist I have seen the label Bipolar Disorder applied to a larger and larger group of people. Now experts in the field say Bipolar Disorder is characterized by "mood swings." Is depression characterized by "mood swings?" Is one profoundly clinically depressed one minute and fine the next? Is one profoundly clinically depressed one minute and clinically manic the next? Rapid cycling Bipolar Disorder is four or more episodes of mania per year with at least a two month period of normal mood in between each episode of mania. That's rapid. Does that sound like "mood swings?"
"Mood swings" are a common presentation of the common conditions called personality disorders (at least 10% prevalence in the healthy population) and substance abuse/dependence disorders (at least 10% prevalence in the healthy population). The prevalences are much higher in patient populations, psychiatric and otherwise.
"Mood swings" are an uncommon presentation of the uncommon condition called Bipolar Disorder (about 1% prevalence in the healthy population according to the DSM-IV.)
If the broadening of the label "Bipolar Disorder" leads to healthy, happier, more productive people then it is a good use of the term. If not, it is not a good use of the term.
I wonder why modern medicine is broadening the definition of Bipolar Disorder to include more and more people?
We have the most expensive, ineffective "healthcare" system in the world. The only killers that kill more Americans than healthcare are heart disease and cancer. Healthcare in America kills more people than anything else. Does that fact make it sound like modern medicine has a sound theoretical basis? (Hmmm, lousy results...it must be based on a sound theoretical basis.)
This is the price we pay for scientific materialism. In going for certainty in science and medicine everything was reduced to matter and energy. You can study that stuff in the lab. The eye of reason yoked to the eye of flesh is all that is real to the modern world. Heart, soul, spirit are nowhere to be found in modern science and medicine. They are nothing but the result of chemical activity in the brain. The price for this certainty is high.
I think psychiatry is now casting a wider net for Bipolar Disorder patients because this condition seems so biological. It is much easier to ignore the emotional/psychological/human factors in "biological" disorders. You can put on your white coat and look at MRI's and have the Today show say, "We are getting close to a cure," and feel smug and proud and certain.
Psychiatrists are jealous of their medical colleagues who work in the more substantial areas of medicine. Psychiatrists want to run with the big dogs. They want psychiatry to be "scientific." To reduce the complex suffering of a human being to chemicals and genes. Matters that can be studied in a lab. The human mind, heart, and soul is ignored because it can't be studied in a lab. We live in a physically transfixed world where the underlying assumption is that the physical level of reality is the ultimate level of reality. It's caused by a chemical imbalance?
What caused the chemical imbalance?
Is the chemical imbalance a cause or an effect?
And how well is the system working that is founded on the unconscious assumption that the physical level of reality is the ultimate level of reality? (This is really what has a scientist assume the chemical imbalance is the cause and not the effect of the depression, bipolar, etc.)
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. ... Philosophy is the product of wonder. -- Alfred North Whitehead
Wake up.
You are not a machine that breaks.
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