Friday, December 30, 2011

Bipolar Or Not

On an Islamic forum a user made a few very intemperate remarks. Another one commented on one of his posts whether the former is bipolar or not. This is interesting point of departure. A new term bipolar is being used here. This is a state in which a person swings between very good and very bad moods. Needless to say that this is an insulting term. On the face of it this state is worse than depression because the irritable and depressed mood is only one disease while swinging between two things is an additional malady. In reality this is strange thinking. The person who is swinging between very good and very bad moods is at least spending some time in good mood. For a person suffering from depression this can not be said. And this is the rub. In modern times we can not even figure out whether we are having good time or bad. Present situation is a good example. A person is spending time in good mood but we are saying that his problem has compounded. To keep the things simple we must assert that problem has been slightly mitigated. The good moods are present and this should be taken as a good thing. Of course excitement and excessive elevation is looked down upon by Shariah. Moderation is Islamic way of life and in the case of so called bipolar disorder there is indeed one additional problem to handle but it is not what our friends from psychology department are at present thinking. The problem is to bring everybody into the moderate range. There should not be too much dwelling upon the horrors of hell because this scares a person. There is also need to indulge in the thoughts of Jannah in moderation because that sort of makes you to forget that you have to work for it in this world itself.

This is all that we would like to say in this post but we ended up bringing the Psychology Department into the discussion. This is also relevant. Like most of other academic disciplines Psychology too has been bucked up to its present state by the west. And like the theory of evolution they have got some of the things in Psychology too badly wrong. People from that disciple will tell you that psychologists take religion as a mental disease. May Allah(SWT) forgive us for mentioning this. We hope to return to these matters again and again in future, Lord Most High willing.