Bipolar disorder – the mood swing disease – is becoming a fashionable new illness, psychiatrists warned yesterday.
Growing numbers of patients are visiting doctors have diagnosed themselves with the mood swing disorder.
The fashion may follow frank admissions from celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Robbie Williams about their mental health problems.
Bipolar disorder was once known as manic depression and people who suffer it experience extreme and sudden swings of mood from deep gloom to hyperactivity.
In spite of the new fashion, psychiatrists Dr Diana Chan and Dr Lester Sireling say the condition remains under-diagnosed. About one per cent of people have been diagnosed with the problem – but, it has been claimed, as many as 11 per cent may experience it.
The pair, who practice in London, reveal the new trend to self-diagnosis in the journal The Psychiatrist.
They write: "The increasing popularity of bipolar disorder may be attributed to increased media coverage, coupled with the high social status associated with celebrities such as Stephen Fry talking about their own personal experiences of mental illness.
"This appears to have promoted the disorder as less stigmatising and acceptable to the public, a phenomenon that may have an evolutionary basis."
They warn that self-diagnosis could pose hazards – such as problems with insurance and employers and the risks from taking drug treatments.
They add: "It can be considered equally harmful, if not more so, to miss a true bipolar diagnosis. Current evidence suggests that bipolar disorder may be under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed."
Chan D and Sireling L (2010) I want to be bipolar – a new phenomenon, The Psychiatrist, 34: 103-105
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