What kind of bipolar disorder is the bipolar disorder suffered from by "genius" translator Jin Xiaoyu?

The article "Our Genius Son" recently swept the screen across the Internet. From novels and movies to music and philosophy, the story of translator Jin Xiaoyu has moved countless readers and made many people notice that the translator, who was called a "genius", was diagnosed with a mental illness from his youth - bipolar disorder. What is the difference between bipolar disorder and depression? Are patients with bipolar disorder "geniuses"? The Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter interviewed Wang Chun, chief physician of the Department of Mood Disorders of Nanjing Brain Hospital.

Screenshot from CCTV News

Bipolar disorder is a mental illness of mania + depression

With a loud bang, Xiaoyu pushed the refrigerator down in the kitchen. This was the first time he had been violent. "Xiaoyu couldn't wake up when he slept in bed, and his mother found out that he had committed suicide by taking sleeping pills." In the article "Our Genius Son" that recently swept the whole network, the symptoms of "genius" translator Jin Xiaoyu were described in this way, and he was soon diagnosed with a mental illness called manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder. In fact, Wang Chun, chief physician of the Department of Mood Disorders of Nanjing Brain Hospital, told reporters that this is the typical symptom of the disease, "On the one hand, patients will have a low mood, unhappiness, decreased motivation and interest, pessimistic performance of similar depression and there are still many such times, but at the same time there will be exactly the opposite performance, when manic, there will be more excitement, energy, arrogance, impulsiveness, irritability and so on." ”

Image source Visual China

Some people regard Jin Xiaoyu as a "genius" translator, and some people cite beethoven, Van Gogh, Newton, Churchill, Hemingway and other historical celebrities who have had typical manifestations of bipolar disorder throughout their lives, but in Wang Chun's view, the so-called "genius" may be more that patients have quick thinking and energy during the manic attack, and may also be because of the patient's sensitivity and profundity to emotional responses, so that they have a deeper artistic sensitivity and appeal to a certain extent, if the disease is not serious, it will help the performance of certain fields. "But the genius here is in quotation marks," Wang Chun pointed out, because the improvement of hypomanic energy and brain power is a disease state, which is uncontrollable, unsustainable, unattainable, and after mania, there is often deeper and longer depression, and after multiple seizures, it will also have a sustained impact on cognitive functions such as memory and attention. Moreover, in addition to the rapid progress of thinking in work and study, patients may also have different degrees of recklessness, indiscriminate spending, reckless investment, easy to lose temper, a little thing is irritable, the probability of arguing with others is also very high, and even more likely to impulsively hit people.

Biological quality accounts for 70% of the causative factors

The latest large-scale flow data from the mainland show that the incidence of depressive disorders in the population is generally about 3.59%, while the incidence of bipolar disorder is about 0.46%. "In mental illness, bipolar disorder and depression, which has been increasingly valued in recent years, belong to the same spectrum, but the disease nature of bipolar disorder is closer to schizophrenia and more serious than depression. Moreover, such diseases have a greater relationship with heredity and biology. ”

Unfortunately, the causes of mental illness are not so clear at present. "What is certain is that it must be related to genetics, there may be thousands of genes associated with mental illness, and bipolar disorder is also a manifestation of a polygenic effect." At present, more than 70% of the factors inherited from genetic factors in the cause of the disease, and less than 30% of the factors lie in social psychological factors and growth experience," Wang Chun further explained.

At the same time, this means that, on the one hand, the current medical technology cannot completely control the pathogenic gene to bring targeted therapy; on the other hand, if it can provide positive guidance to the potential patients of the disease, it can play a certain preventive effect. "If a person has a bipolar genetic risk, but does not develop the disease, then he will be fine for a lifetime." However, if some people are more 'unlucky', he has genetic risks, coupled with his growth experience, family environment is not good, encountered major setbacks, etc. to cause him to fall ill, then the lives of these two patients are completely different. ”

Pharmacological interventions can lead to effective "clinical cures" for patients

So what can someone around you do if you have bipolar disorder, or if you have a tendency to have this disease? Wang Chun pointed out that it is very important for patients or potential patients to provide a warm, companionate, open and positive living environment for their children, rather than an environment full of pressure, neglect, abuse and other bad family and growth factors. "First, such an environment is less likely to lead to the onset of the disease, and even if there is such an environment during the seizure period, it is more conducive to recovery and reduces the chance of recurrence."

Symptoms of bipolar disorder differ from depression and interventions vary widely. Wang Chun said that because about 70% of the causes of the disease are biological quality, the current treatment of bipolar disorder is also based on drug treatment, supplemented by psychological intervention. "The psychological intervention of bipolar disorder is more about how to ensure medication compliance, how to recognize symptoms in time, seek medical treatment early, how to prevent recurrence, and how to solve the patient's interpersonal and life difficulties." In fact, the purpose of psychological intervention is more to support it than to simply treat the disease itself, but this plays an important role in reducing recurrence, promoting recovery and quality of life. ”

Wang Chun told reporters that as far as "clinical cure" is concerned, it is not difficult to control the symptoms of bipolar disorder, as long as more than 80% of patients who take medicine according to the doctor's instructions can control their symptoms. However, if you do not take medicine at all and want to achieve a "complete cure" state without seizures, it is still difficult, "our drugs can control symptoms, and can not change the genetic genes that cause the disease, so bipolar disorder is also a chronic disease, it takes a long time through the drug to continue the state, after a long time, the patient's biological environment can obtain long-term stability to be able to gradually reduce the drug under the guidance of doctors, and some patients can be completely cured without recurrence", Wang Chun said.

Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News trainee reporter Lu Yanlin

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