Bipolar Spectrum Disorder And The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale
Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale (BSDS) is a diagnostic tool used to determine if someone with mood disorder symptoms has bipolar disorder. The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale contains nineteen sentences.
Written by Ronald Pies, M.D., the Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale was refined by S. Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., M.P.H. This diagnostic tool is considered sensitive and can detect many variations and levels of severity of bipolar disorder.
Pies was motivated to create the Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale after he had worked with several people who were labeled as having "treatment-resistant depression" only to discover they actually had bipolar spectrum disorder or mild bipolar disorder. Bipolar spectrum disorder is not an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) which is used by mental health professionals to diagnose psychiatric disorders.
Some mental health professionals use the term bipolar spectrum disorder to include people who have bipolar symptoms, but whose symptoms are not severe enough to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder symptoms that are milder than the guidelines of the DSM is sometimes called soft bipolar disorder or soft bipolar spectrum disorder.
The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale has two sections. The first section has nineteen sentences that describe the main symptoms of bipolar disorder. The patient is to check the sentences that describe their feelings or behaviors.
The second section asks the patient to read the sentences of section one as a narrative that the patients must rate as to how well the nineteen sentence narrative as a whole fits their personal experiences. The first section is scored by awarding one point per sentence that the patient checked as matching their personal experiences.
The second section is scored according to how the narrative is rated by the patient. If the patient indicates that the story fits them very well or almost perfectly, six points are added to the person's score. Four points are added if the patient says the narrative fits fairly well.
Two points are added if the patient's rating is that the story fits to some degree but not in most respects. No points are added to the patient's score if the person says the story does not describe them at all.
If the patient scores nineteen or higher, bipolar disorder is considered highly likely. If the score is eleven to eighteen, bipolar disorder is moderately probable. There is a low probability if the score is six to ten. Bipolar disorder is very unlikely if the score is under six.
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