What Is The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale?
The diagnostic tool Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale (BSDS) contains nineteen sentences and a rating scale. If a person is having symptoms of mood disorders, a mental health professional may use the Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale to determine if the person has bipolar disorder.
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 unofficial diagnosis of bipolar spectrum disorder to refer to people who have bipolar symptoms, but their symptoms are not severe enough for an official bipolar disorder diagnosis. Mild bipolar disorder is sometimes called soft bipolar disorder or soft bipolar spectrum disorder.
The Bipolar Spectrum Diagnostic Scale has two sections. The first section contains nineteen sentences that describe the primary symptoms of bipolar disorder. The patient checks the sentences that describe their behavior or feelings.
The second section contains a rating scale. The patients must rate how well the nineteen sentence narrative of section one as a whole fits their personal experiences. The number of the sentences checked in first section is the score for that section.
The score of the second section is based on how the collection of sentences of section one is rated as a whole by the patient. If the patient rated the story as fitting them very well or almost perfectly, six points are added to the person’s score. Four points are added if the patient rated the collection of sentences as fitting their experiences fairly well.
If the patient said the sentences fit to some degree but not in most respects, two points are added. If the person says the story does not describe them at all, no points are added to their score.
If the patient’s total score is nineteen or higher, bipolar disorder is considered highly likely. If the total score is eleven to eighteen, the likelihood of bipolar disorder is moderately probable. There is a low probability of bipolar disorder if the score is six to ten. Bipolar disorder is considered very unlikely if the score is under six.
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Written by Sheila Wilson on September 30th, 2009 with
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