Probably the most important thing to do when you have to cope with bipolar disorder is making a good treatment plan.  A treatment plan consists of good contact with a doctor and good contact with a therapist. You should be able to regular visit your doctor to talk about how you feel and if the medication is till doing it’s job. Talking to a psychotherapist is also a very important thing to do. He will guide you how to cope with the symptoms of bipolar disorder and how to recover from episodes of mania, hypomania or depression.

If you don’t have a treatment plan there is a very good chance that coping with bipolar disorder | manic depressive disorder will be a lot harder. You really need to know if the medicines you are taking are still working, and what triggered the depression or the mania. Although you are probably quite well to notice when you feel depressed, it is almost impossible to notice if you are in an episode of mania. When you have an episode of mania you will feel so good that you think medicine is not needed anymore and this will trigger the mania. When you don’t talk to a psychotherapist, you will not get the insight on how you can deal with the symptoms and how to recover. The sooner you notice a new episode coming, the bigger the chance you might prevent it.

A very good idea in dealing with bipolar disorder | manic depressive disorder is keeping a journal. If your regularly write down how you feel and keep track of your progress, you might notice possible triggers sooner. It could also help you sustaining your treatment plan and help you remember when to take your medicine or go to appointments.

Probably the most important thing in coping with bipolar disorder is keeping some kind of daily schedule for your self. You need to keep a tight schedule from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed. A disruption of your daily rhythm might be a trigger for a new episode of mania or depression. keeping a schedule will help you maintaining a healthy lifestyle and decrease the chance of a new episode.

There are some common triggers out there that might cause a new onset of an episode. One of them is stop taking your medicine because you feel better. Another one is when you notice you don’t need as much sleep as normal and you don’t want to go to bed. Other triggers might be drugs and alcohol abuse or abnormal flirting with the opposite sex.

Bipolar disorder is a disease you have to life with for the rest of your life. Coping with bipolar disorder will be very hard but the advice mentioned here might get you on track in organizing your life and live a ‘normal life’.

There are different types of bipolar disorder and some of them will have features of mania or hypomania. In extreme cases of mania and very rare in heavy depressive episodes, someone will get psychotic features. Psychotic features of mania and heavy depressive episodes are delusions and hallucinations. A person who is psychotic will loose all concept of reality and will not see the world as you and I see it. Delusions are false beliefs.Ffor instance, a person could believe that god himself has send him to be the new messiah. These delusions are often seen in mania and are truly absurd. Sometimes people believe they have super powers or that aliens have invaded earth. These extreme delusions are also seen in Schizophrenia  and schizo-affective disorder. Milder delusions are often seen in people with dementia. Delusions in a major manic depressive disorder are not the same as the ones in mania. They are often more negative as their mood is also very negative. Delusions are related to your negative or positive mood. For this reason, some patients with bipolar disorder are diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

Next to delusions, hallucinations are also frequently seen in a psychotic episode. The main difference between a delusion and a hallucination is that a delusion is something you belief and a hallucination is something you see or hear. There are auditory hallucinations which are often seen in Schizophrenia, patients hear voices in their head telling them to do things. In extreme cases like a psychotic event, patients can see little bugs crawling on their own body or see dead people walking as if they never died. A very good example of such is seen in the movie: A beautiful mind.

When a patient is psychotic he can be in any state and even be a danger to you or himself. The patient is often placed in a room where he can not hurt himself. In psychotic events, only anti-psychotic medicine will help the patient to get out of his psychosis. Often Haloperidol or Risperidone is used to tranquilize the patient and reduce the psychotic effect. Off course only a doctor will subscribe these medicines as the effect should always be monitored.

Bipolar disorder with psychotic features is not seen very often and also wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia. The chance on a new psychotic event will rise with every new episode of psychosis. Anti-psychotics will reduce the episodes but often not prevent entirely. Another disadvantage is that when people start to feel good they believe they don’t need the medication anymore and without medication the chances on a new psychosis will only rise more.

Every depression, if it is a unipolar depression or a bipolar manic depression, will start with a period of depression. Even a bipolar disorder will always start with a few cycles of depression. Therefore there is always first a diagnosis of depression before there is a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Almost 20% will eventually get a mania or hypomania episode and move to the diagnosis spectrum of bipolar disorder.

There are a few different types of manic depressive disorder. It nis not exactly clear how many different types there are but we must consider it as a continuum. We speak of a bipolar disorder 1 when someone has had different reoccurring episodes of mania without major depressive episodes. Depressive episodes are evident but are not required for a diagnosis bipolar disorder 1.

We speak of bipolar disorder II if the disorder is characterized by hypomanic episodes rather than manic episodes and at least one major depressive episode. The criteria for this disorder is that one should not have had an episode of mania. However, this does not guarantee that this person will not eventually get an episode of mania and therefore another diagnosis. The big difference between mania and hypomania is that a hypomania will not go to the extreme. This period is often seen as a productive period where there is nothing wrong with the person as in a mania someone will feel more than good. He feels great and can not see disadvantages of some of his own actions. The normal functioning in a hypomania makes it very difficult to diagnose a bipolar II disorder.

Cyclothymia is defined by periods of hypomania and depression that is not a major depressive disorder. The hypomania and depressive episode will frequently cycle in episodes. Both will not met the criteria for a mania or a major depressive disorder.

an atypical bipolar disorder or also called bipolar nos is given as a diagnosis when someone fits a bipolar disorder but does fit any of the specific diagnosis mentioned above. Although one is not meeting the criteria for a full diagnosis, this does not mean that these people suffer less or function better than people with another diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Atypical bipolar disorder is often a catch-it-all diagnosis but also a disorder that is very well present.

Fatigue

Fatigue is probably the physical symptom that is the most associated with manic depressive disorder. By this we don’t mean tiredness after running or after a fitness training. Fatigue is a state where you don’t have the energy to do anything. Al you want to do is lay in bed and stay there because you feel to tired to get up and even make a cup of coffee. It is associated with loss of energy and no interest in anything around you. The sad thing is that Fatigue leads to more fatigue and eventually even going to the bathroom is too much. This is why the first thing psychologists do in therapy is increase activity.

Headache

Chronic headaches are highly associated with manic depressive disorder. Chronic headaches are defined as headaches that returns 15 days out of the month for at least 3 months. Patients with chronic headaches often see there headache disappear in the same time when their depression is treated.

Sleeping disorders

Sleeping orders is a very important physical symptom of depression. When a person is sleeping too much it is often not notices that this could be a sign of depression. Often patients just think they are tired and they need some more sleep. Sleeping too much is just as bad as sleeping too little and both are an important symptom of depression. Sleeping disorders are often associated with a lack of energy and fatique.

Eating disorders

Eating disorders are also a very important physical sign of depression. Often it is seen that a patient with depression will loose weight or gain weight because the eating patterns are not functioning any more. When a person feels sad he often does not feel hungry and if he feels sad every day he will loose weight. Sometimes eating too much is also an expression of feeling sad as this might be the only thing that relieves the sadness. Eating snacks like chocolate or chips give a nice feeling but after they are finished, the sadness increases as they are not happy with their physical appearance.

Body pain

Body stress and body pain are highly associated with each other. When you work under a lot of stress you often get headaches or pain in the neck. Feeling depressed is some kind of stress to the body and the body will react to this with a sensitivity of unexplained pain. This pain can present itself in the neck joints, lower back, but also internal in your stomach, liver, kidneys. Patients often don’t feel they are taken seriously when a doctor sends them to a psychologist for unexplained pain sensations but very often a psychologist gets more positive results with these patients than a doctor.

In this article is written what are the physical symptoms of bipolar depression. Next to the emotional symptoms of sadness, physical symptoms are very important to notice for a diagnose of depression.

The onset of this disorder usually occurs in the mid twenties. There are some different theories that might explain the development and the early onset of the disease. As mentioned, it seems that manic depression has a genetic link. This means that the chance to get this disorder is bigger if your parents also have this disorder. Researchers don’t know exact how to explain the extreme mood changes that occur with these patients, but it has a lot to do with the brain chemistry not functioning as it is supposed to do.

A genetic link is not enough to explain why some people will get a manic depressive disorder and other don’t. It seems that important life events that create a lot of stress or anxiety are important in the development. This is also called the threshold theory. Some people inherit a very high threshold and this means they need a lot of stress and bad things in their life’s to get manic depressed. Others will have a very low threshold and they only need a few bad life events to develop a manic depressive disorder.

So what are life events? A bad life event is not losing your football match on high school. Important life events that could trigger a depression are often: when one of your parents dies, when you are confronted with a lot of failure in your life, a traumatic accident, getting handicapped, abuse, rape and more very bad things you don’t want to confront. The threshold and life event theory does not explain everything as it is a very simple way to explain how it works. This theory is also used to explain why some smokers develop cancer and others don’t. In short, it is a very common theory.

Now let’s explain a little more on brain chemistry and the causes of manic depression/ bipolar syndrome, as this sounds a bit like physics to some people. The brain is a very organized and complex organ and one of the most important one of our body as we can not live without it. The organization of the brain is controlled by many different things. Some we don’t understand exactly and some we do. Into the brain you can find a lot of small hormones that will influence your behavior. You could compare this to females getting there period (no offense). In this time a month, the mood and behavior of a female can change a little. These hormones in the brain are called neurotransmitters. The best known are: Dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline and many more. Maybe you heard of some of these hormones as they are very common to influence some mayor disorders or diseases. Serotonin is mostly associated with sleeping disorders and Dopamine is associated with dementia and Parkinson disease.

Most of the cells in your body will react when some hormones reach their cells. With other words; they have a standard job to do when these hormones reach the cell. A possible cause of manic depression is that cells in the brain don’t do their standard job anymore when these hormones reach the cell. They will overreact or sometimes do nothing. This imbalance of how they are reacting could be a explanation of the extreme mood changes. Off course this explanation is very basis as it is more complex.

When you had some serious mood swings, there is a chance that your doctor will diagnose a bipolar of manic depressive disorder. How many mood swings you had and how fast the cycle between the mood changes are is a good indication of the severity of the disorder. Just like depression, every cycle of depression and in this case also mania, will increase the chance of a new cycle.

In this article we explained some causes of manic depression and how they influence the development of the disease. The best known causes are the threshold theory combined with the life events theory. Another theory is the brain chemistry theory.

The difference between mania and hypomania is that people with mania also have social and relational problems and could even be psychotic. This does not apply on people with hypomania.

The period when someone feels very sad and depressed is called depression. Between these extreme mood changes someone will feel quite normally and will also function quite normally. There are personal differences what weights the most in a manic depressive disorder. Some people will have more cycles of depression than (hypo)mania and other will feel more (hypo)mania than depressed. However, very often there is a recognizable pattern within a person who has bipolar affective disorder.

The mood changes are a huge drawback in functioning of daily life. Also in the period between mania and depression someone feels dis comfortable with his behavior as he is uncertain when the behavior will come back. He could also feel ashamed what he had done in the period of mania.

Does it pass by?
The disorder itself will not go away by itself. However there are medicine which can help you to keep the mood stable and prevent new cycles of depression or mania. Mood stabilizers like lithium are very popular to keep the mood stable. The first onset of manic depressive disorder is between 15 and 25 years old. One episode will endure approximately 3 to 6 months. A period of mania is often shorter than a period of depression. There is a very big difference between persons how they feel. Most of the people with this disorder will feel normal 6 months a year. If someone recovers depends on what he has done in the periods of onset. Often relationships are broken of someone will get unfit to work.

Important life events (negative but also positive) will influence first episodes more than  later episodes. Alcohol abuse and smoking weed and hasjies can strenghten the effect of manic depressive disorder. It also counts on what age is the first onset period. The younger you are, the more unfavorable the prospects are.

Of all the adult grown ups to 65 years old, 1-2% will get a manic depressive disorder and 0.5-1% will get the disorder this year.