["What is a bipolar disorder?" Results of a representative survey of the German population]

To explore to what extent the lay public knows that the term bipolar disorder denotes a mental disorder.

In January 2005, a telephone survey was conducted among a random sample of the German population (n = 1006). Out of four options given, respondents were asked to select the one they considered to be the correct explanation of what is meant by bipolar disorder.

Most of the respondents (61%) believed that bipolar disorder is just another term for the melting of the polar ice caps, only 4.6 % associated it with mental illness.

The question arises as to whether it makes sense to use a diagnosis which the lay public associates with everything but a mental illness. Since it is impossible to erase the term bipolar disorder from the psychiatric terminology, it seems necessary to increasingly propagate this term among the lay public.