Bipolar Disorder: The Drawbacks of Excessive Positive Emotion

The Epoch Times:

Too much positive emotion in the wrong context can act negatively on people’s health, according to a new article in the August edition of Current Directions in Psychological Science journal.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a psychiatric condition characterized by mood swings in which sufferers alternate between periods of depression and mania, for example extreme self-confidence, irritability, increased energy, and less sleeping.

Psychologist June Gruber at Yale University examined the extreme positive emotions experienced by people in remission from bipolar disorder in a series of different contexts.

“The fact that positive emotion has gone awry is something unique about bipolar disorder, as almost all other emotional disorders are characterized by difficulties in negative emotions,” said Gruber in an Association for Psychological Science press release.

Whilst watching a positive, sad, or disgusting film, people with a history of bipolar disorder reported greater positive emotions than those who had never been diagnosed with the condition.

Read the whole story: The Epoch Times