Bipolar Disorder And Lithium – Applying This And Other Treatments

In psychiatry or psychology, professionals refer to an affective disorder as a prolonged emotional disturbance. It is a psychiatric disorder that has a profound central emotional component especially characterized by depression. When you speak of bipolar affective disorder, you speak of such a condition, but one that switches you between the extremes of mania and depression.

When you have bipolar affective disorder, you will find yourself suffering from extreme mood swings, which range between acute euphoria mania and severe depression. In bipolar affective disorder, the depression you suffer from is as bad sometimes as major depression, which I must assure you is a very bad thing; and the mania can be mild or severe.

The manic phase of bipolar affective disorder can have you feeling unusually and unreasonably capable; like you own the world and that nothing can go wrong. It is worse because you tend to feel irritable when you want something and you cannot have it, and it may cause you to lash out at the people you love. Of course in this energized state, you are bound to have trouble sleeping and engage in rapid-fire speech that is heading you nowhere.

When you are suffering from the depression of bipolar affective disorder, you are entirely the opposite. Things could get as bad as hallucinations and delusions, but often it begins with the weakness and listlessness that often is quickly followed by a sense of helplessness that makes it hard for people to be able to enjoy your company. When you are depressive, the things that used to make you happy all of a sudden have little or no positive effect on you, and you are indifferent to them. Interestingly, you also lose appetite and sleep in this phase, and you may feel like committing suicide.

Well, I can say one thing about that; when you feel like committing suicide, don’t do it!

Win Bipolar Disability Benefits

The treatment for bipolar affective disorder is one that you want to consider with utmost care. You can’t be too careful because treating one phase of the condition could trigger off the other chapter of it without warning. For instance, if you took medication for major depression, it may cure the depressive phase of your bipolar affective disorder, but it could also prompt a manic episode.

Perhaps the most reliable treatment for the ‘disease’ is lithium carbonate and a number of other lithium salts. Lithium carbonate is a natural mineral salt that has the ability to control both your mania and your depression. If you took the medication at a time when you were ‘normal’, you would be able to stave off the attacks of either phase. It has one catch, though; it weakens your kidneys somewhat. If you have kidney issues, you don’t want to use lithium carbonate.

Other ways you can attempt to treat your bipolar affective disorder include a healthier diet, some exercise, and serious stress management. If you can manage the stress in your life, you may be able to see that nothing sets you off either manically or depressively.