¶ … bipolar condition, serious as it can be in disrupting a person's normal living patterns, and the patterns of those living with the person with a bipolar condition, is seen in only about one percent of the U.S. population (Zai, et al., 2012). As to whether there is linkage to family genetics -- that indicate the possibility or probability that a family member is a candidate for a bipolar condition -- studies have "…not provided consistent findings of susceptibility regions" (Zai, 1). That said, a combined analysis of "original data from 11 previous linkage studies," using 1,067 families with bipolar disorder revealed "…significant findings in chromosomal regions 6q for bipolar 1…" (Zai, 1). Also, in the research of those 1,067 bipolar families, it was learned that there were "suggested findings at chromosomal regions 9p and 20p for bipolar 1" (Zai, 1).
Moreover, some studies which will be included in this paper do show that in certain environments individuals identified as bipolar can negatively affect those family members living with them. This paper reviews patterns that can be identified in the literature relating to individuals living with bipolar sufferers and the resulting circumstances.
Children of Bipolar Parents
In a brief article published in the peer-reviewed Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter, the authors report on a pilot study that delved into the "initial course of psychiatric illness" in the adolescent offspring of parents who have the bipolar disorder (Duffy, et al., 1998). The findings in this research: the children of bipolar parents that were "lithium-responsive" -- children that were experiencing psychiatric illness themselves -- tended to have "affective disorders that remitted and followed a recurrent course" (Duffy, p. 4). But psychiatrically ill children whose bipolar parents were "nonresponsive" to lithium showed a "broad range of psychopathology" and had elevated rates of "comorbid illnesses" (Duffy, p. 4).
The conclusion that the authors reached from this research -- after interviewing the children of bipolar parents that met "Research Diagnostic Criteria" for bipolar -- was that family history and the "course of illness" are pivotal factors in the process of diagnosing and treating affective disorders (Duffy, p. 4).
Family Environment Patterns in Families with Bipolar Children
A scholarly research article in the Journal of Affective Disorders delved into the way families function that have bipolar children in the household -- juxtaposed with families that had only healthy children. The point of the article was to see if there were "greater levels of dysfunction" in those families with bipolar children (Belardinelli, et al., 2008). The authors used the "Family Environment Scale" (FES) to measure and conclude their results.
In an interesting and revealing research project, the authors compared how 36 families functioned that had a child with DSM-IV bipolar disorder, versus how 29 other families functioned that had healthy children in the household. The authors of course interviewed all the families (assessing them with the K-SADS-PL format) and the parents were also asked to complete the FES in advance (Belardinelli, 299).
It should come as no surprise that the parents that had children with bipolar disorder reported "…lower levels of family cohesion" than those families with healthy children. Parents of bipolar children also reported a lack of "…expressiveness, active-recreational orientation and intellectual-cultural orientation" -- in stark contrast to families with healthy children (Belardinelli, 299). Also those families with bipolar children had "…higher levels of conflict" compared with families that had healthy children, Belardinelli reports (299). The authors point out that a "secondary analysis" of those families with bipolar disorder "…revealed lower levels of organization and cohesion" where a parent had a history of "mood disorders" -- compared with families with no history of mood disorders (299).
On page 300 Belardinelli and colleagues report that when a child is in a remission from his or her bipolar 1 condition, that remission can be reversed into "relapse" if the child is exposed to family members "…who...
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