Bipolar Disorder - The “Kindling” Model
Posted by Administrator in Mental Health.If a bipolar person goes untreated for a period of years, could he or she begin to experience rapid cycling, or become treatment-resistant? If stressors initially set off episodes, in time could episodes appear without any such triggers? Research says the answer to all these questions is yes, and the reason may be a process that has been termed “kindling.”
The phenomenon of kindling in epilepsy was first discovered by accident by researcher Graham Goddard in 1967. Goddard was studying the learning process in rats, and part of his studies included electrical stimulation of the rats’ brains at a very low intensity, too low to cause any type of convulsing. What he found was that after a couple of weeks of this treatment, the rats did experience convulsions when the stimulation was applied. Their brains had become sensitized to electricity, and even months later, one of these rats would convulse when stimulated (History, 1998). Goddard and others later demonstrated that it was possible to induce kindling chemically as well (Hargreaves, 1996.)
The name “kindling” was chosen because the process was likened to a log fire. The log itself, while it might be suitable fuel for a fire, is very hard to set afire in the first place. But surround it by smaller, easy to light pieces of wood – kindling – and set these blazing, and soon the log itself will catch fire. Dr. Robert M. Post of the National Institute of Mental Health (USA) is credited with first applying the kindling model to bipolar disorder (NARSAD). Demitri and Janice Papolos, in their excellent book The Bipolar Child, describe this model as follows:
... initial periods of cycling may begin with an environmental stressor, but if the cycles continue or occur unchecked, the brain becomes kindled or sensitized – pathways inside the central nervous system are reinforced so to speak – and future episodes of depression, hypomania, or mania will occur by themselves (independently of an outside stimulus), with greater and greater frequency. Read more