Dr. Salomon STRUL
NEUROPSYCHIATRY
ELECTROMECHANICAL ENGINERING
C.N.P.C.
After a 40-year neuropsychiatric career and a long experience in Belgian University psychiatric hospitals, we offer a checklist for young (and less-young) psychiatrists, for the legal psychiatry, to help them to orientate the diagnosis towards bipolar psychosis (formerly called manic depressif illness) which has many facets very often overlooked.
Psychiatrists find it very difficult to build a diagnosis, given the complexity of a clinical picture that is offered to them when a new patient enters an emergency room.
We would like to warn the reader of our training in the field of mathematics and statistics and we wish to emphasize that we always speak in terms of probabilities and not of certainties!
To develop our list, we were able to benefit from a homogeneous population of patients who were globally from the same geographical and cultural ethnicity and with a consanguinity rate clearly higher than the European average.
The study population consisted of individuals from Morocco, particularly the Rif, Turkish Anatolia and Pakistan. A great advantage that has greatly facilitated the creation of this non-exhaustive list is the presence of large families that characterize these populations, on which the application of statistical data related to the law of large numbers has been evident.
We therefore present this list according to the importance of the clinical manifestations presented, but we do not claim to "force" the diagnosis if one or more symptoms are present.
Of course, the more symptoms the patient presents, the greater the likelihood of bipolar disease in the individual.
It should be remembered that hormonal disorders, in particular dysthyroidism (both hyper and hypothyroidism) or adrenal dysfunction generate disorders which are psychic, related to bipolar disorder. It is impossible to manage mental symptoms until the hormonal disorder has been resolved.
We reproduce this list below according to the importance that we place on the listed disorder.
This order is not exhaustive either.
If the reader finds that some items deserve to rise in rank or others on the other hand should go down, we are ready for a constructive discussion which may help this list move towards an optimum.
The scope of this text is because in my 40 years experience, the treatment of the equivalents is the same that thouse of the bipolar disease !
EQUIVALENTS OF BIPOLAR DISEASE
1. Depression, mood swings, irritability, aggressiveness, cyclicity, cyclothymia
2. Anorexia – Bulimia (very fat or very thin), Bariatric surgery
3. Alcoholism or drugs
4. SUICIDES or suicidal tendencies
5. Serial Killers
6. Frequent psychiatric hospitalizations
7. Frequent stays in prison
8. Divorces and frequent marriages
9. Multiple corrective surgery
10. Mutilation and tattoos
11. Numerous accidents (including at work)
12. Repetitive failures
13. Successions of unfinished work
14. Career instability
15. Housing instability
16. Compulsive “tidying” access
17. Brilliant achievements
18. Exuberant productivity in all areas
19. Hypersexuality – many partners (including prostitution)
20. Pathological hoarding
21. Compulsive shopping – buying fever
22. Pathological journeys, aimless wandering
23. Dangerous sports (bungee jumping for example!)
24. Adventurers – backpackers
25. Addictive pathological games
26. Seasonal variations (at leaf fall and leaf growth)
27. Mythomania
28. VicariousMünchhausen
For youngters
29. Psychomotor agitation (ADHD) – children
30. Video game addiction (young people and teenagers)
31. Social media addiction
We are sure that readers of this list will be astonished to find manifestations of which they are aware to experience them themselves, but which they have never told anyone around them!
We simply want to remind them to reassure them, that the readers of this text, are part of the ELITE of the planet and that it is precisely in this elite (about 5% of the earth’s population) that the bipolar characters are found. It is during hypomanic states of this part of the population that helps all humanity to evolve!
Dr. Salomon STRUL
Neuropsychiatrist
Electromecanichal enginer