How do you tell unipolar depression and bipolar disorder apart?

By symptom: Bipolar depression (bpd) cycles with mania (aggressiveness, grandiosity, insomnia, hypersexulaity, impulsivity) & is very frequently comorbid with anxiety. Unipolar depression is another name for medical depressive disorder (mdd). Bipolar-ii is like bpd, but it cycles from really depressed to less severely depressed, has no mania or hypomania, & is also called treatment resistant depression.

Mood Swings: By definition bipolar disorder requires the presence of either cycles of alternating mood or severe and debilitating mood swings. In unipolar depression the concern only has to do with depression.

Some physician: Can have difficulty in making the diagnoses , therefore during my I have experienced numerous patients they were placed on multiple antidepressant , three benzodiazepine and Ritalin (methylphenidate) , and when i saw them i gave them bipolar affective d/o diagnoses, and when they were placed on mood stabilizer they became better.

Use MDQ: By using this method u will be unlikely to misdiagnose bipolar affective d/o.

Bipolar: If in depressed phase, history of mania/hypomania points toward bipolar. Also prior response to meds.

Can be subtle...: Doctors have correctly explained that bipolar has two poles--depression and mania (or hypomania), unipolar one. The subtlety is that the poles don't necessarily alternate. One may have 1, 2, ...Episodes of depression that look unipolar. Then a manic episode appears and looking back, those "uniplolar" episodes were really bipolar depressions. These require different treatment than unipolar.