What are the psychiatric Disorders other than bipolar disorder?

Before bipolar disorder can be diagnosed, other psychiatric disorders that could cause the symptoms must be ruled out. One challenge in the differential diagnosis of bipolar disorder is that depressive symptoms can occur in nearly all psychiatric disorders. Manic symptoms, in contrast, usually only occur in bipolar disorder.

The most important differential diagnoses for bipolar disorder involve distinguishing it from the below psychiatric disorders:

  • unipolar depression
  • schizophrenia
  • schizoaffective disorder.