Accurate diagnosis of bipolar depression and its stage often relies on reports from people around the patient due to impaired interoception.

“So the accurate understanding of whether or not someone has bipolar depression or not, and what stage of the illness they might be in or not is going to depend on the reports of people around them and not the patient themselves, hence the importance of having a rather detailed and admittedly a rather intense discussion about the symptomology of bipolar disorder, so that you can have an understanding of the people around you and have an eye and an ear to whether or not those people might be suffering from bipolar, and if so, at what stage of the disease they might happen to be at.”