Posts Tagged ‘Bipolar Disease’

Bipolar Disorder Symptoms – Tips To Identify It

In order to become successful in life, it is quite essential to be healthy and wise. While any sort of physical restrictions of the body can be fought with and dealt with, the central processing unit of our body that is our brain needs to be absolutely perfect in order to live a happy & successful life. For all our errands what we primarily need is a sharp brain so as to understand our environment and act promptly & make well evaluated decisions.

Along with a perfectly working brain, what we need is a control over our emotions. Being over excited or unduly angry all the time would not help us in any way. Quoting in the right terminology all our psychological factors must be balanced enough.

And what if you discover that you yourself have or some of you known to has a brain disorder? One such common brain disorder is bipolar disorder. This disease not only effects our emotions and decisions on daily errands, in extreme cases it can lead to suicides as well.

The bipolar disorder symptoms can be broadly categorized in to three main heads. These are as follows:
i. Manic Symptoms
ii. Psychotic Symptoms
iii. Depressive Bipolar Disorder Symptoms

In case you find any of these symptoms growing, it’s just the time to consult the psychiatrist.

There are several manic, psychotic and depression symptoms of bipolar disorder. These are as follows:

1. They share their feelings quite openly.
2. Everything in their life is far grander, faster, & generally bigger than usual.
3. The person in this state is generally quite active than usual.
4. Such patients speak and think very fast, at least faster than their usual self.
5. Everything about their life seems to be exaggerated, may it be their overwhelming feelings of self importance.
6. They have very grand schemes & look for adventures in their works. Whenever their plans to grandeur do not work out, they blame some extraneous factors.
7. Within no time people with such disorders move to other plans.
8. All these accumulate to a very whimsical behavior on their part.
9. Manics tend to be very reckless.
10. Their actions go so far that they can at times land up to a jail and/or they often have broken relationships.
11. While these symptoms just seem to be abnormal behavior on the part of the individual, it is certainly an alarm for a major problem that is bipolar disorder and you must check with your psychiatrist and/or physician regarding the same.
12. A person suffering with bipolar disorder feels just too little or absolutely no need for sleep and/or food. This marks the beginning of the severe manic state. While some individuals are able to resist such a stage, usually like all human beings our body needs rest and sustenance to keep healthy.
13. The psychotic bipolar disorder symptoms often culminate to mania alongwith mixed moods & occasional depression symptoms.
14. Psychosis refers to some break with reality. It can occur in varied forms like hallucinations, both auditory (that is hearing voices, etc.) & visual.
15. Delusions, and/or false beliefs are other bipolar disorder symptoms. Like, a person starts believing that he/she is some famous figure from the history.
16. The symptoms of bipolar disorder are usually depression and can be seen easily only if one is willing to do so. The key signs of depression are apathy, indecisiveness & low self esteem.
17. The physical symptoms of depression in bipolar disorder are weight loss or gain, fatigue & eating and/or sleeping quite less or more than usual. The patients of this disorder always seem to be telling the people around them that they are not well physically.

New Bipolar Treatment Proves Patients Can Control Their Mania

Australian researchers have discovered a new procedure which has let bipolar patients control their mood swings. In studies, so far, they have managed to cut the number of manic attacks that their patients suffer, by half.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by extreme mood swings from periods of excitability to periods of depression and back again. Bipolar 1 disorder affects over two million U.S. citizens every year. In many people, the mood swings can be so great that it prevents them from being able to live a normal life. This roller coaster of emotions not only affects them, but it affects their friends and family as well.

The new procedure basically involves adding therapy to the bipolar treatments that the patients normally receive. In reality, therapy is not new as many physicians already believe that the most effective treatment for bipolar disease is to use medication in combination with prescriptions medication. But belief does not equal proof.

Researchers from the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria (MHRI) located in Melbourne, Australia, and is Australia’s largest independent psychiatric research center, have gone on record as believing that this study is the first one that proves bipolar patients can control their mania. The exciting impact of the Australian study is that it gives credence to the value of psychotherapy in treating bipolar illness.

The Melbourne study consisted of 84 bipolar patients. Half of the patients were given medication only. The other half were give the same medication but in addition attended weekly therapy sessions. The therapy sessions focused on teaching the participants to recognize the common symptoms that might trigger a depressive or manic episode. Symptoms such as

insomnia, a significant change in appetite, trouble concentrating, listlessness or tiredness, and other symptoms that are commonly recognized as indicating a bipolar event might be taking place.

The working theory behind the study is that if a bipolar sufferer is aware of an impending episode, he has the chance to do something about it. And the theory, in this case, proved to be correct. At the end of the study, the 42 patients taking the therapy, had only 50% of the manic or depressive episodes of the 42 patients that were treated with medication alone.

The study effectively demonstrates that therapy which emphasizes and teaches the patient how to plan his life, as much as possible, around regular daily activities and stable relationships, can help them to suffer less manic/depressive attacks and to recover faster from the ones that they do experience.

Unfortunately, long-term therapy is not cheap and many insurance companies will either not cover it or cover only a portion of it. Hopefully, studies like this will help to push the insurance companies into recognizing that therapy is a valid and useful treatment for bipolar disease and may even help to decrease their long term costs.

This study is also important and encouraging for many sufferers who don’t want to be entirely dependent on prescription medication. It gives them a sense of hope that they can exert a portion of control over their lives that up until now has been lacking.

14 Basic Bipolar Disorder Facts Everybody Must Know

In the absence of research and development many medical ailments were earlier treated as incurable mammoths. Bipolar Disorder is one among them.

Earlier the individuals suffering with this kind of disorder was often regarded as a ‘very moody person’ or in extreme cases the family wrote them off saying that they have become insane. Later on the scientists made us realize that this disorder is a – Manic Depression, also known by the name of – Bipolar Disorder.

Though this disease is not new, along with the name many other things regarding this disease are quite new like the help we can lend to such patients. As its effects can be very wide spread and deadly, the treatment is as crucial.

Some basic facts regarding Bipolar Disorder or Manic Depression are as follows:

1. As the name is withdrawn rightly, the disorder has two key phases – mania and depression. All the symptoms, ailments and effects of this disorder primarily belong to these two aspects.

2. This disorder is found equally among men and women.

3. Out of the world’s total population, around 1% suffers with the bipolar disorder.

4. Mania is found in two main divisions: hypo mania & full-blown mania.

5. Hypomania is a state where the individual possesses quite intense energy & is able to yield unusually high productivity. Ones who remain until this stage turn out to be great salesmen and high powered businessmen. Yet, the danger remains as many of the hypo-maniacs are just of the verge of being full blown maniacs.

6. The full-blown maniacs’ actions are rather devastating. Individuals suffering with bipolar disorder often become subject to the full-blown mania where they start making unnecessary moves in their business. Their actions yield far more losses than benefits, they themselves are never able to note this.

7. Patients of bipolar disorder almost never consider the results of their actions. They would spend money just like anything unconsciously. The money that they might have saved for some basic necessity for home or business, they might land up pending it in something just not required. They would sign the cheques irrespective of the fact that there is money in the account or not.

8. Such patients often become too generous and gift away their treasured items or things that they just can not afford to give away. Though, later they also regret their actions.

9. In an acute manic state the bipolar disorder can be characterized by overly gregariousness of the individual. They become extra ordinarily outgoing and do not realize whether their company is good or bad. This could be quite dangerous as getting in tough with some unwanted and unethical people can also land up in several irreversible problems such as sexual exploits, henceforth pregnancy, sexual diseases, or hampered relationships.

10. In extreme cases the disease suffering with bipolar disorder lands up in a phase of psychosis. This is the time when the patient has bizarre thoughts, like delusions and hallucinations. At this time the patient looses the senses of his/her immediate environment and is not able to make out the difference between realism & hallucinations. So he /she become so vulnerable that they can not even save themselves from natural calamities.

11. Often the mania cases land up to a phase of depression. Such individuals seclude themselves from their loved ones & acquaintances and many a times become bed-ridden for days together. Their sleep, appetite, energy level, etc. everything gets deeply effected.

12. One of the major dangers in bipolar disorder when the person goes in to depression is that they become suicidal. Hence, when the patient is in the phase of depression he/she must be guarded thoroughly.

13. Many adults & teenagers try to cope up with their bipolar disorder with other prolonged diseases like alcohol and drugs. Such cases are medically termed as – dual diagnosis. Such addictions complicate the patients’ condition and make thee treatment rather more difficult. However, with the changing scenario of our society this has almost become a common factor.

14. While individuals dealing with bipolar disorder have a lot many problems to handle, they can be optimistic due to the fact that several ways have been worked out for them to get cured and get a hold on themselves, like medications, therapies, routines, etc.