By John Aziz, MD
Psychiatry, Psychiatric Center of Northwest Ohio
Bipolar disorder is a chronic mood disorder that affects about 1% of the U.S. population. Although bipolar disorder is highly genetic, there is no specific mode of inheritance of the disorder from an affected parent to their children. That means if the father or the mother has bipolar disorder, the children might have a higher risk of having bipolar disorder, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that any of them will definitely have the disorder at some point in their lives.
As the name “bipolar” implies, there are two ends of the “pole”: the higher end and the lower end.