Welcome to module two. In this module we're going to take on a very broad topic, mood disorders. The term mood disorder is used to describe a significant struggle with emotions. Before we jump into a discussion of abnormal emotions, let's spend some time talking about normal or typical emotions. Emotions vary a great deal throughout the course of our lives. Each of us has a typical or baseline mood, which is usually neutral or positive, and we all experience ups and downs and our emotions as we go through our lives. At times we may feel extremely happy if we're offered a job we really want or buy a home we love, and at times we feel intensely sad if our romantic partner ends the relationship or we experienced the death of someone we love. Our moods have much more minor fluctuations as well. We may feel peaceful and content when we drink our favorite coffee or tea in the morning, or when we share a meal with a friend. And on the other hand, we may feel frustrated or disappointed if we receive a poor grade on an exam we studied hard for or we don't receive a job promotion we feel we deserve. All of these fluctuations in our emotions, both large and small, are considered normal. It is completely predictable for us to experience these ups and downs. In the course of our daily lives, we feel unusually happy for a time, or unusually sad for a time, but we always return to our emotional baseline. A person is said to be experiencing a mood disorder when the pattern of their emotions represents a significant deviation from what is considered typical for people. And this pattern causes some combination of intense distress, compromised functioning in daily life and or potentially dangerous situations for the person. Other people are both keep in mind as we discussed in module one. The determination of psychological abnormality is complicated and often unclear both the internal experience as well as the external presentation of mood disorders vary from person to person and situation to situation. So what are mood disorders? The term mood disorders typically refers to some experience of depressive symptoms, manic symptoms, or both. Let's take a closer look at each of these. In turn, depression is a very low, sad emotional state. Mania, on the other hand, can loosely be understood as the opposite experience of depression. It involves intense and overwhelming emotion and energy, which may not sound like a bad thing, but we will see that it's very problematic for people experiences of depression and or mania are fundamental to depressive disorders and bipolar disorders. Someone is diagnosed with a uni polar depressive disorder if they only struggle with episodes of depression and there's no mania present. If a person experiences episodes of both depressive symptoms and manic symptoms, they are diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, let's look more closely at these experiences. Beginning with depression, depressive symptoms involved feelings of intense overwhelming sadness. Although some people report a sense of emotional emptiness. Depressive symptoms also include an inability to enjoy life, even the parts of life that used to bring the most joy or pleasure. Sometimes people feel intensely guilty, even though they're not aware of doing anything wrong, depressive symptoms generally have a profound impact on the way people think and behave and even the way they physically feel in their bodies. Typically, people who struggle with these symptoms have very little or no motivation to do anything, go to school or work care for Children or engage in daily activities. They're uninterested in maintaining their relationships. They often engage in negative patterns of thinking. They may experience hopelessness, helplessness, or intense self criticism. They frequently report a great deal of difficulty with both concentration and memory. They may spend a great deal of time thinking about death in general or their own death in particular, and they may have suicidal ideation or thoughts of ending their own lives. Depressive symptoms have an impact on the physical body. People struggling with these symptoms usually experience physical fatigue and they may move or even speak very slowly. They usually experienced significant disruption in their sleep pattern, either sleeping too much or not being able to sleep at all. Insomnia includes difficulty falling asleep, waking up early in the morning, waking up in the night and being unable to fall back to sleep. Or some combination of all of these appetite disruptions are also common. People may lose their appetites and eat very little and lose weight, or they may experience an increase in their appetites and eat more than usual in gain weight. Other physical symptoms include chronic body pain and headaches. Now let's turn to mania. A person experiencing manic symptoms can be thought of as experiencing intense, overwhelming emotions at times. This may be a sense of pure euphoria. While other times the emotion, maybe intense anger or agitation, this mood state is also characterized by a high energy level that becomes too much for a person to contain or manage. Typically leading to problematic behaviors, a person struggling with manic symptoms is usually full of ideas. Their thoughts raced so quickly that they struggle to keep up with them. They often talk very quickly in an effort to get all of their thoughts out. Something referred to as pressured speech. They may be consumed with projects they are working on, and in the early stages of a manic episode they may actually complete. Many tasks are engaged in high levels of creative productivity. A person with manic symptoms typically experiences highly inflated self esteem, referred to his grandiosity. A person experiencing mania is typically very distractible and may have difficulty following a single train of thought or maintaining focus on an activity. This distractibility may be evident in their speech as they jump from topic to topic. A person struggling with many experiences very little or no need for sleep and prolonged periods of insomnia worse. In the manic episode, people experiencing this mood state usually need to continuously seek out new people and new experiences, which often includes making risky decisions that could bring harm to them or in other people. For example, a person might gamble away their savings account, go on a shopping spree even though they have no money to pay off their credit cards or engage in high risk sexual behavior. People who are experiencing manic symptoms are generally unaware of how other people experience their behavior, and they do not realize they're using poor judgment in their decision making. This is referred to as low insight into the disorder. At worst. A manic episode can include false beliefs about the self, others or the world called delusions. A manic person experiencing delusions may believe they can fly, or that they were elected president of the world. We'll talk more about delusions in Module five. In the next lecture, we will take a closer look at different forms of depressive disorders and bipolar disorders, as well as their estimated prevalence.
