MINTZ: Let’s Stop Calling the Weather ‘Bipolar’

I have some serious issues with the weather lately. Coming from South Florida, where there are only two seasons (hot and really hot), I thought that fall was something out of my always-50-degrees-and-sunny, red-and-orange-leaved dreams. This is not the case. The trees framing the West Campus dorms are barely even turning orange yet, and it’s one week into October. Sure, the weather is really beautiful some days, but other days, it’s 50 degrees and rainy, and my walk from West to the College of Communication becomes an all-out brawl between my rain jacket’s hood and the wind coming straight down Commonwealth Avenue toward me.

Now that we’re firmly planted in that period of weather where it’s gorgeous one day and miserable the next, I have started hearing an all-too-familiar word circulate around campus. There is no word that can make me roll my eyes quicker, no word that can cause me to tune you out faster.

Bipolar. Even typing it in this context bothers me.

Why do we use the word “bipolar” in place of “indecisive” or “rapidly changing” or “moody?” And worse, why does nobody bother correcting it when someone makes this faux pas? The weather cannot be bipolar. Only a person can be bipolar, and even then, bipolar does not mean what you think it means. I have heard many a professor or parent described as “bipolar” just because they are nice one day and rude the next, or because they go off on strange tangents. This is not bipolar disorder. This is not even a “bipolar personality” (I heard that one once and cannot even begin to comprehend what that person meant by it). This is just someone being a person. Moodiness, indecisiveness, the ability to change your mind — these are just symptoms of being a human, not symptoms of a mental illness. Your weird professor probably is not bipolar, you are not bipolar just because one day you realize that one of your friends is a little bit annoying, and the weather is most definitely not bipolar.

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental illness that affects millions of people every day. It is characterized by periods of severe depressions alternating with periods of mania or hypomania. It is the manic episodes that separates bipolar disorder from major depressive disorder – symptoms of mania are extreme productivity, deliriously good mood, delusions of grandeur, little to no need for sleep, fits of anger and violence, paranoia and even, in extreme cases, psychosis, according to The National Institute of Mental Health. These episodes of mania and depression can cycle as often as multiple times a day (in the most severe cases) or as little as twice a year. People with bipolar disorder experience these symptoms on a spectrum. There are milder cases of the disease. People with the disorder even go into periods of remission during which there are no symptoms at all.

Now, I am no weather expert. I am just a lowly journalism major. But I am pretty sure that the weather cannot be depressed or psychotic.

Another extremely troubling thing I’ve been hearing is the casual use of the term “anxiety/panic attack.” Anxiety and panic attacks do not arise from being upset that you accidentally slept through your class Tuesday, or what you did when you got a bad grade on a paper or that time you freaked out because the College of Arts and Sciences elevator didn’t come in time and you were a little bit late to class. A panic attack is an extremely harrowing fit of total anxiety and is to be taken extremely seriously. It is characterized by muscle tension, nervousness, inability to concentrate, inability to sleep, paranoia, dizziness, rapid heartbeat and so on.

I know that, just by nature of being on a college campus, anxiety is a topic that all of us know very intimately. But nerves are not a panic attack, and the weather is not bipolar, and I don’t understand why this is so difficult for people to grasp. We cannot just throw around the words “bipolar” and “psychotic” and “retarded” as if they are commonplace adjectives and not serious mental illnesses, or we become the problem. We cannot use these words as synonyms for anything other than the debilitating sicknesses they are or we serve to further stigmatize mental illness, which is already a huge problem in our society.

However, I know that I can only accomplish one thing at a time, so for now, I will leave you with this: please stop using the word “bipolar” to describe the weather or your weird professor or your parents. Stop using the word “bipolar” to describe anything other than a person who is bipolar and who has expressed to you that they are bipolar. The weather is not bipolar — you are simply ignorant.