What Is Bipolar Affective Disorder?
Bipolar affective disorder, also known as bipolar mood disorder or manic depression, is an illness in which there are extreme changes or swings in mood. Everyone has times in life when they feel very happy or very sad, but this condition is unusual because the mood changes can be extreme, ranging from being very happy or irritable (known as mania or hypomania) to being very sad (depression). Some people have a mixture of both extremes (mixed episode). These mood swings feel very different to how you normally feel.
