Understanding the complexity of bipolar mixed episodes.

The current system of diagnosis and classification from sources such as the DSM-IV-TR and the ICD- 10 are not adequate to represent the complexities of bipolar illness. As the phenomenology or the presentation of the illness becomes better understood, the bipolar nomenclature may have to be altered. Psychiatry is moving toward the concept that mixed states lay on a bipolar spectrum such that patients can have innumerable combinations and varied degrees of manic and depressive symptoms.