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Mood Disorders
Everyone has “moods”, high and low, and this is a good thing. A person’s mood can change from day to day or multiple times in a day, and be affected by any number of things: events, interactions with other people, good or bad news, how much you’ve eaten or exercised, the weather, how much sleep you got etc.
If you imagine mood to be like a sliding scale, with zero being the lowest mood possible (profound grief or numbness), and 10 being the highest mood (mania or euphoria), people typically move up and down the middle portion of this scale.
Some of us might spend more time in the lower part of the scale, while others might typically rest somewhere in the higher end. There is a wide range of “normal” when it comes to mood, and a healthy person typically experiences a healthy range of moods. Highs and lows are a normal part of life.
If someone has a mood disorder, however, it means that there is an issue with how they are experiencing moods. It might mean that they are “stuck” in a low mood (depression), or that they seem to swing between the mood extremes (bipolar disorder) for no obvious reason.
Someone with a mood disorder might find it hard to maintain a higher mood for any length of time and/or not be able to pinpoint or explain why their mood is low, as it seems to be out of their control. It can be extremely disruptive to a person’s life, and affect relationships, employment, school, family, goals etc. [Source: mindyourmind.ca]
Mood disorders are not:
- Simply feeling sad or low – everyone feels sad or low at times.
- The result of any actions or personal failures of the individual.
- A sign or result of low intelligence or weakness.
- All the same. Symptoms differ between disorders and people.
There are a few different types of mood disorders: depression, dysthymic disorder and bipolar disorder.