Individuals with bipolar 2 disorder are symptom-free approximately 45% of the time and experience hypomanic states about 4-5% of the time.

“But bipolar 2, you can imagine could really duck under the radar of our awareness. And you could imagine that we might just think somebody is low or depressed, especially if that person tends to self-medicate with alcohol or other substances. We might think, oh, they're drinking more than often more than usual, excuse me, or they're spending more time alone and isolating. But then when they're in their hypomanic state, that might actually present as normal to us because they were in such a depressed state before.”