Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Consulting

Bipolar  Disorder is a complex illness that can be very difficult to manage. Life naturally has its ups and downs, but for a person to maintain balance with bipolar disorder, it can be more of a challenge.  Here are some things that can help maintain that balance.  Medication is an important component to the treatment of biopolar disorder, but not the only thing. 

The 4 basics

1. Get 8 hours of sleep nightly. Irregular and erratic sleep patterns can trigger manic episodes, and can be a sign that mood instability is starting to occur.
2. Lower life’s stress through lifestyle changes. Life will always have its challenges, but a person with bipolar disorder will be more easily destabilized.
3. Exercise regularly: Keep your body healthy.  Several of the medications used to treat bipolar disorder can have adverse metabolic outcomes, and so can a heightened response to stress.
4. Participate in cognitive therapy: this can help prevent the ups and downs that may occur in response to cognitive distortions (negative thoughts that cause us to feel bad about ourselves)

Invest in loving, trusting relationships.

One of the problems with bipolar disorder is that the disorder can fool a person into believing that they are fine. So it can be very helpful to have people in your life that you trust, who can tell youwhen you are starting to appear hypomanic. For example, someone wyou trust may tell recognize symptoms of hypomania including decreased need for sleep, thoughts that are moving more quickly, increased efforts to “get rich quick” or engage in an increased number of tasks and projects. 

Remember, others will recognize hypmania before you will, because the bipolar disorder takes away your insight. 

 It can be very helpful to work with someone that you trust to develop a list of signs and signals of mood instability. It can also be useful if these people are willing to share with your physician, in writing or in person, the observations that they make. This can be very helpful to your physician. 

Track your mood.

 Mood Trackers for Bipolar Disorder 

Another very powerful tool to staying well is to track your mood. There are online and paper-types of mood logs. They help keep track of your mood from day-to-day, how many hours you sleep, and how fast your thoughts are. For women, it can also be helpful to follow menstrual cycles, because mood is closely tied to this.  

During times of stress, it is important to have a plan to help us cope and re-gain our balance.

We will all face short-term stressors that make us feel we cannot get out of bed. or make us too overwhelmed to fulfill our daily obligations. The bad ways to cope can include self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs, or attempting to seek fulfillment or gratification in unhealthy ways (such as impulsive sexual acting out, gambling, or impulsive spending) 

• For some people, the short-term use of a medication such as a benzodiazepine can reduce stress sufficiently to help recover balance, though this is not necessarily a good approach for a person with a substance abuse history.
• For some people, increased exercise may help.
• Some people may call their pastor for a time of prayer.
• Some people may call a friend for support.