Could this develop from an event?

Question

Could bipolar disorder develop from a an event that took place in your life that really scared you or got you very upset?

Answer 1

The going theory on bipolar disorder is called the stress-diathesis model, which is just a fancy way of saying that you have a bipolar "time bomb" (diathesis) in your brain and some sort of stressful event in your life triggers it.  So two people in the same family could both have a genetic predisposition to developing the disorder (diathesis) but if only one of them experiences some sort of severe trauma, that would trigger the disorder in that person while the other remained unaffected.  I don't know how well I explained that...