Drug Treatment For Bipolar Disorder – Using The Right Medication For The Right Symptoms

There are various types of bipolar disorder, and the treatment of the condition has to depend on the type of bipolar disorder that you are suffering from. For instance, if you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder SAD, you may use such standard antidepressant medications as Prozac, which is actually fluoxetine, and Zoloft, which is sertraline.

Even though doctors recommend exercise and stress management to treat seasonal affective disorder, they also advice that you allow yourself to experience as much outdoor sunlight as possible, and that you take light therapy treatment in addition to the rest of the medications you are taking for the bipolar disorder condition.

You cannot be too carefree about your bipolar disorder medications because the wrong type will really hurt you more than it would help. It is dangerous to use the medications for depression and mania at the same time because it could actually result in outright madness.

The latest addition to the treatment of bipolar disorder is the medication Risperdal that was only approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the year 2006. The first of its kind, it is great for treating irritability, which you may experience when you are in the manic phase of your bipolar disorder.

Otherwise, you may want to try a mood stabilizer like lithium, and a number of other lithium salts that can keep your mania or your depression at bay. Lithium is good because it is a medication that can help you such that you may never even experience the episodes as long as you are on the pills.

Doctors often prescribe Valproate when you suffer from bipolar disorder and also have kidney problems. Because Lithium can affect your kidney adversely, you can take Valproate as the medication of choice. Valproate can be very helpful in either mania or depression, but often it is better in dealing with manias.

Win Bipolar Disability Benefits

In Europe, Carbamazepine is extremely popular for the treatment of bipolar disorder. Again, it is a medication that works best for dealing the manic phase of bipolar disorder, and not as good for depression. As can be expected, it has not yet received global approval.

Indeed, the reality is that in treating bipolar disorder, you have to be very careful with your medications. Since the treatment of mania alone can cause you to slip into depression, and the treatment of depression alone can trigger of mania or a rapid-cycling manic-depression, you have to see that you get the best medication all the time. Speaking to a qualified psychoanalyst may just be your best shot at curing the syndrome.

By and by, you are going to have to blend your bipolar disorder medications with a better grip on your mental state and thought processes, a better feeding diet, and a lot more exercise than you are doing already.

Atypical Bipolar Disorder – Describing Three Types Of Bipolar Disorder

Basically, there are several types of bipolar disorder depicted by the amount of suffering that you are going through. For instance, there are forms of bipolar disorder in which you may remain in one phase of the condition for whole years without switching, and others in which you could switch as often as four times between mania and depression within a single year. Some forms of bipolar disorder depend on social actions or activity, while others depend on the seasons.

Below are the three major types of bipolar disorder that there are.

Type I bipolar disorder – This is also referred to as classical bipolar disorder or bipolar disorder I. In this condition, you experience long spells of mania followed by long spells of depression. You could say that when you suffer from bipolar disorder I, you have equal spells of mania and depression. One form of the disease that falls in this category is the Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD, in which you are affected by the seasons and they come and go. During winter, you are gloomy, sad and depressed; and during summer you are excited, bright and” well, excited.

Type II bipolar disorder – This can be simply shortened to bipolar disorder II, it is one in which the manic and depressive episodes are not equal. You often tend to suffer longer spells of depression when you have bipolar disorder II, and shorter spells of mania, in what professionals call a hypo manic episode. This type of bipolar disorder is closely related to cyclothymia, but they aren’t exactly the same thing.

Cyclothymia, you see has more of equal but mild forms of mania and depression characterizing it. You may consider it a precursor to full-blown bipolar disorder.

The symptoms of bipolar disorder aren’t so straightforward because you have to consider both the symptoms of mania, and those of depression otherwise you’d get them wrong. For instance, when you are depressive, you would eat too much, sleep too much (hypersomnia) or too little (insomnia), you would be in constant fatigue, and things that made you happy would mean nothing to you all of a sudden.

When you are manic in bipolar disorder, you are excessively and unreasonably happy, over energized, irritable, and often physically abusive. You will tend to be cantankerous too, and wasteful because of the pointless activities you would be engaging in.

In all forms and types of bipolar disorder, all of these symptoms are present but to varying degrees. Diagnosing a patient own your own is possible, but it is best done by a medical professional such as a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a psychoanalyst. You see, there are lots of treatments and medications that can be used in helping bipolar disorder, but you cannot afford to have them applied wrongly.