Have you Been Diagnosed as Being Bipolar?

Being diagnosed with an illness can often bring a sense of relief. It can help a person to make sense of the way they have been feeling for some time and draw a line under the frustration of not knowing what their condition was. At the same time though it can also bring up a whole host of new questions and worries, and this certainly happens when a person is diagnosed as being bipolar.

Bipolar disorder or disease as it is also known is a type of mood disorder that can send the bipolar person into manic highs and depressive lows. In between these periods, or episodes, the individual who is bipolar can feel totally normal and this is what can make having a diagnosis of bipolar disorder so hard to cope with.

Unfortunately being diagnosed with bipolar is seen as something as a stigma and this is due, in part to society not fully understanding the impact that being bipolar has on a person. Being diagnosed with bipolar is just the start of a long journey for a person who is striving to become well again and wants to function just like anyone else. It is all too easy to think that as soon as a person finds out they are bipolar all they have to do is to start taking their pills for the disease and this will miraculously cure them in no time. This assumption is wrong.

Instead being diagnosed with bipolar means that the person can now start to find what type of treatment will work the best for them and move forward with their lives. If you have had a recent diagnosis of bipolar you might have mixed feelings about what this will mean for your future so it is essential that you find out all you can about the condition.

Bipolar disorder can be treated in two main ways – with drugs which are prescribed specifically to the individual based on their own needs and the severity of their bipolar disorder and psychosocial treatments. Lithium is often used as it works very well as a mood stabiliser and there are different strengths of this available for doctors to prescribe for people diagnosed as being bipolar. Lamotrigine is also used if the patient has severe episodes of depression as this can help to alleviate the symptoms and further stabilise the mood. There is currently a strong debate over whether or not antidepressants should be used to treat those people who are bipolar as they have been known to be a trigger for depressive episodes, so it is quite unlikely that these would be prescribed.

Psychosocial treatments can come in the form of cognitive behaviour therapies and similar as these work at the core of bipolar disease and help to highlight emotional triggers for a sufferer. In fact many people believe that when used in conjunction with the correct drugs psychosocial therapy can make a big difference to the quality of life for a person who is bipolar.