it ' s best to catch this genetic illness early so that it isn ' t allowed to wreck lives . No reasonable person could argue with that . Fortunately , I ' m not reasonable . From a financially unprofitable ten in a million we now have one in twenty who are supposedly bipolar . But be clear , the new bipolarity wasn ' t discovered by psychologists , it was concocted by marketing people . Obviously , one in twenty people aren ' t having the dizzying highs and crushing lows I described earlier . So what treatment can you expect to receive if you are branded with this new condition ? Well drugs obviously . But what drugs ?
The unstoppable rise of ' Mood stabilizers '
Well one very popular drug is Dapakote . Once you start peering into the world of pharmaceutical treatments you start to see what an upside down , back to front Alice-through-the-looking-glass kind of world it really is . Take the so-called ' mood stabilizer ' drugs for instance . As mood stabilizer drugs were developed the apparent prevalence of ' mood disorders ' rose sharply . A real coincidence ! Millions more people were labelled ( or as the pharmaceutical companies would have it " recognized as having ") bipolar disorder . You or someone you know may have been prescribed the famous ' mood stabilizer ' Dapakote . So what do we know about this particular mind-altering product ?
Dapakote - what is it good for ?
Well it doesn ' t prevent mood swings that ' s for sure . Although it ' s branded as a ' mood stabilizer ' there really is no such thing . In fact , the term ' mood stabilizer ' was dreamed up by marketing people in the Abbott Laboratories ( 3 ) and used to promote their newly concocted soon to be best-seller Dapakote back in the 1990s . Dapakote was approved by the FDA ( US Food & Drug Administration ) but only for the manic phase of what used to be called manic depression . And it ' s important to remember that any sedative will seem to have a benefit for mania as it will impact the hyperactivity . But why did Abbott dream up the phrase ' mood stabilizer ?' ( just to reemphasize ; this wasn ' t initially a psychological term but a marketing one ). Here ' s why : Because the FDA ruled that Dapakote wasn ' t a prophylactic ( which means it doesn ' t prevent mood swings ). So if Abbott had claimed their wonder drug could prevent mood swings they would have broken the law ; although as it