Are patients with Bipolar Disorder always either manic or depressed?
No. Patients with Bipolar Disorder may recover from their depressed or manic episodes and have a normal mood state. However, they always run the risk of having futher episodes of depression or mania, especially if they are not on mood-regulating medication. In addition, patients may be hypomanic. That is, they may have some symptoms of mania but not for long enough or severely enough to interfere with their functioning in a marked way. This can be difficult to distinguish from feeling “average” or “normal” in mood. Finally, patients may have a mixed episode, during which they show symptoms of depression and mania concurrently or symptoms of one type or the other on different days within the same week.
