A Brief Breakdown of Bipolar Spectrum Disorder

Dr. Jorge Galindo is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist in Irvine, California. He shares a private practice with wife, Miriam Galindo, PsyD, and also serves as a reserve deputy sheriff with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. During his time as a doctoral intern at St. Joseph Hospital, Dr. Jorge Galindo received special training in areas of assessing and treating bipolar spectrum disorders.

While bipolar disorder is sometimes presented as rapid mood swings from manic episodes to periods of depression, the condition is actually far more nuanced and complex. In fact, a number of mental health professionals view bipolar disorder as a spectrum. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders 5th Edition (DSM-5), there are four distinct versions of bipolar disorder.

Bipolar I disorder involves episodes of either mania or mixed episodes of mania and depression. To qualify as bipolar I disorder, these episodes must last for a minimum of 7 days. Bipolar II disorder also involves episodes of depression, but instances of mania are replaced with less severe episodes of hypomania.

Cyclothymia can be viewed as the least severe version of bipolar disorder, though it still involves shifts between hypomania and depression that can impact an individual’s daily life and well-being. The DSM-5 states that these alternating periods must persist for at least 2 years to be considered cyclothymia.

Finally, bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS) is a term used to describe a bipolar disorder that does not conform to the patterns described above. For example, a person with bipolar disorder NOS may suffer from episodes of hypomania but not depression. It should also be noted that bipolar disorder can overlap with other mental health conditions, such as generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.

Understanding Hair Follicle Drug Testing and How It Works

Residing in Irvine, California, Jorge Galindo is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist who works alongside his wife Miriam Galindo in their private practice. With over 20 years of experience, Jorge Galindo has received training and certification by Quest Diagnostics for hair follicle drug testing in forensic cases involving juveniles.

A hair follicle drug test is performed to determine drug use patterns through hair samples. While a urine sample has been the traditional way of assessing drug use over a couple of days, hair follicle drug testing is more efficient as it can check a person’s drug usage in the past 90 days.

In juvenile cases, a court may order drug testing on a child to determine whether they have been abusing illegal drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin, morphine, codeine, and phencyclidine. A small hair sample is collected from the person’s head during the test and sent to the laboratory.

The use of two methods maintains test results’ accuracy. The first method is a rapid screening method involving an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). If this method produces a positive result for a particular substance, the technician retests the hair sample using the second method. The second method uses confirmatory chromatographic testing like gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This second test is used to rule out any possibility of a false positive.