This video describes the course of bipolar disorder. When we talk about bipolar disorder, we’re talking about a disorder characterized by the occurrence of manic episodes. These are periods of time when mood is elevated. We also see major depressive episodes, which are periods of time when mood is depressed or low mood. We consider bipolar disorder to be a chronic disorder, so usually after onset somebody will have symptoms on and off for the rest of their life. In some cases, bipolar disorder remits, but most the time we consider this to be chronic. With some mental health disorders, it’s expected that a symptom of that disorder or several symptoms of that disorder would be present every day or most days in a week. Bipolar disorder is unusual in the sense that is has manic episodes and oftentimes depressive episodes and they are markedly more severe than what we see the rest of the time. Usually between episodes most individuals will have symptoms, but they’re not as severe as what we see during the manic ep