Overview

A person’s mood may go up and down normally depending on things that happen in life or as a reaction to circumstances.

However, when changes of mood are extreme, unprecipitated, or triggered in certain ways and very much disturb our usual equilibrium, one of the causes can be an illness called ‘bipolar affective disorder’. Even the name suggests that mood is divided into two distinct ‘poles’.

This is a serious psychiatric condition and diagnosis early on is important, to stabilise mood and keep from recurrent swings one way and the other.