Bipolar Disorder Treatment

Bipolar Disorder: Causes, Types, and Treatment Process

Bipolar disorder affects 40 million people worldwide. In bipolar disorder, a person experiences mood extremes: highs and lows. Mood swings can affect your daily life, relationships, and work. On average, symptoms begin during early adult years. However, it may also begin during childhood and much later in life.
Studies show that those with bipolar conditions are at a much higher risk of suicide, with 15-17% of individuals taking their own lives if left untreated​. Life expectancy for people with bipolar disorder is also reduced by 10-14 years due to increased risks of health issues like cardiovascular disease​.
However, with early diagnosis and a combination of medication and therapy, up to 80% of patients can effectively manage their symptoms and lead fulfilling lives​.

What Is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition. It causes severe mood swings such as emotional highs (mania) and lows (depression).

In depression, you lose hope feel extremely sad, and lose interest in doing any day-to-day activities. On the other hand, when you get an emotional high you feel excited and happy. These mood swings affect your overall life, sleep pattern, behavior, energy, judgment, and thinking ability.

Your mood swings can occur multiple times or at once. Some people get the symptoms for a very long time. On the other hand, others get frequent symptoms of mania to depression at the same time. However, if you get the right bipolar disorder treatment, you can easily manage your symptoms very well.

What Are the Causes and Risk Factors of Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder's exact cause isn’t found yet. However, scientists believe there is a genetic connection. More than ⅔ rd of bipolar-diagnosed people have a close relative with the same condition. But, if someone in your family has bipolar it does not mean you also get.

Other things that may lead to bipolar disorder include:

1. Changes in the Brain: People with bipolar disorder have slight differences in their brains. But these changes don’t show up in scans.
2. Life Events: Stressful events, like losing someone you love, serious illness, divorce, or money problems, can trigger mood episodes. Trauma and stress can also play a role in starting the disorder.

Scientists are still studying how these things affect bipolar disorder and how they can help in treatment.

Diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder

Diagnosing bipolar disorder professionals do the following tests:

1. Physical Examination: Medical professionals do your lab test and physical examination. It helps to find the cause of your symptoms.
2. Mental Health Checkup: After, the lab test and physical examination your healthcare expert suggests you consult a psychiatrist. They will examine your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In addition, with your approval, they ask your family questions about your symptoms and behavior.
3. Mood Tracking: You have to maintain daily tracks of your mood swings, and sleeping patterns as per your psychiatrist consultation.

Types of Treatment For Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a lifelong condition, and treatment helps manage its symptoms. Doctors, along with other health professionals, guide the treatment. The two main parts of treatment are medication and psychotherapy.

Medications

1. Mood Stabilizers: These help control extreme mood swings, both highs (mania) and lows (depression). Common medicines are lithium and valproic acid.
2. Antipsychotics: These are used alone or with mood stabilizers to manage extreme moods. Some examples are olanzapine and risperidone.
3. Antidepressants: These help with depression but are usually used with mood stabilizers to avoid triggering manic episodes.
4. Antianxiety Medications: Antianxiety medicines can help you deal with anxiety or sleep problems. However, these medicines work only for a short time.

Psychotherapy

5. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: This therapy helps people to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts.
6. Family-Focused Therapy: This therapy gives patients family support. It gives patients emotional stability.
7. Social Rhythm Therapy: This therapy focuses on keeping a regular routine of the patient such as sleep and meals. It helps balance moods.
8. Social Rhythm Therapy: This therapy focuses on keeping a regular routine of the patient such as sleep and meals. It helps balance moods.

Other Treatments

1. Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): This is used for severe cases when medicines don’t work, using electricity to help the brain feel better.
2. Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (RTMS): This non-invasive treatment uses magnets to help reduce depression when medicines don’t work.

Bipolar disorder needs ongoing treatment and commitment to manage its symptoms over time.





What Are the Steps of the Bipolar Treatment Process?

Here are the steps of the bipolar treatment process:
1. Preliminary Assessment and Admission: The doctors get to know what makes you feel this way. The medical doctors try to seek information about your mood, retrieve your medical history, and analyze other associated influences on your health condition to create a very personalized treatment plan for you. Your symptoms may warrant that you seek inpatient care at the hospital, depending on their severity. They can also suggest you need to keep reporting regularly to the clinic while living at home.
2. Detox and Managing Withdrawal Symptoms: If you have substance use disorders – either drug or alcohol problems – your doctors may need to help you through a detox. That means they have to clean your body free of harmful substances. They will keep you safe and comfortable as they help you ride out withdrawal symptoms. Detox is important so that you can fully focus on treating your bipolar disorder without anything interfering.
3. There are two major kinds of care options for bipolar disorder: inpatient and outpatient: There are two principal routes through which a treatment for bipolar disorder can be received;

   Inpatient care: This is when you have to spend your time in the hospital. In this way, doctors can monitor you and give you support around the clock. It is usually recommended when it's serious.

   
   

   Outpatient care: You live at home but often go to the clinic for appointments. It is good if the symptoms are less severe or under control.

   Both types of care require medicine and therapy to improve your state over time. Your doctors will find what works best for you as you consult together.

What Are the Effective Bipolar Treatment Approaches?

The most effective treatment for bipolar disorder treatment works best with both medicine and psychotherapy. Most people take more than one medicine, like a mood stabilizer and an antipsychotic or antidepressant. You need to keep taking your treatment, even when you feel better, to manage your mood.




Doctors usually avoid antidepressants when prescribing medicines for bipolar disorder, because the safety and efficacy are not always guaranteed. Mood stabilizers as well as atypical antipsychotics are the most commonly prescribed drugs. The FDA has issued a warning stating that antidepressants may cause suicidal thoughts in children and adolescents suffering from mental disorders.




After getting better from a bipolar episode, you have a high chance of relapse for 4-6 months. Doctors recommend continuing therapy during this time. The risk of new episodes remains for life.




People with two or more manic or hypomanic episodes usually have lifelong bipolar disorder. They need ongoing treatment to lower the risk of future episodes. Once your doctor stabilizes your mood, you will need to stay on medication, sometimes at lower doses, for a long time.





Medically-Assisted Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

The treatment for bipolar disorder is very effective when the medication is used in combination with psychotherapy. Doctors give different types of medicines to control both manic and depressive episodes.

1. Mood Stabilizers: These medicines help control mood changes. Lithium is a popular mood stabilizer. It helps stop both manic (highs) and depressive (lows) episodes.
2. Antipsychotics: If mood stabilizers don’t work well enough, doctors may use antipsychotics like olanzapine or quetiapine to control severe manic or mixed episodes.
3. Antidepressants: Doctors sometimes add antidepressants to help with depression. They must use these carefully because they can cause manic episodes in some people with bipolar disorder.
4. Ongoing Treatment: There is continuous treatment even when the patient appears to be improving, as one must continue with the medicines to prevent new attacks, and a relapse can be precipitated by a withdrawal of treatment.
5. Combination Therapy: Usually, doctors combine medicines so that the symptoms can be more effectively controlled. With time, this indeed does help in the reduction of mood swings.
6. Psychotherapy: In conjunction with the medication, sometimes therapy is also used in patients, like cognitive-behavioral therapy. This way, one will be able to understand one's condition much better and take better control over it. It helps a person be able to recognize mood triggers and develop appropriate coping strategies.



Rehabilitation Programs for Bipolar Disorder at Jagruti Rehab

At Jagruti Rehab, we have structured a well-rounded rehabilitation program to address all aspects of bipolar disorder. We look to our team of professionals combining medication with counseling and holistic therapies to help patients take back their lives.

Our programs, both inpatient and outpatient, are individually designed so that each patient has a plan that responds to his or her unique needs.





Latest Trends in Bipolar Disorder Treatment

Several causes of Bipolar Disorder exist, including social, genetic, and environmental effects. Even though doctors have made tremendous progress in every medical field, most patients still do not improve after normal treatment. Treatments may include therapy, medication, and brain stimulation techniques, but they are more challenging for such complex causes as BD. Traditional treatments don’t always work, and doctors are now exploring new options (Paul and Potter, 2024).




Recent studies show that adding supplements and new compounds can help treat mood disorders (Concerto et al., 2023). There is also interest in using psychedelics to treat mental health issues (Kozak et al., 2023). New brain stimulation methods are showing promise for patients who don't respond well to regular treatments (Albert et al., 2015; Mutz et al., 2018; Nicoletti et al., 2023).




One study by Borgogna and Aita looks at the serotonin hypothesis, which says that mood disorders are linked to changes in the brain’s serotonin system. This has led to the use of SSRIs, but many now question their safety and effectiveness. The study suggests that psychologists and doctors should explore new ways to treat BD.




These trends in treatment offer hope for improving how doctors manage bipolar disorder and help people live more stable lives.





Success Rates and Effectiveness of Bipolar Disorder Treatment

With early intervention and a good treatment plan, most people with bipolar disorder can live healthy and fulfilling lives. How well they do often depends on sticking to their medication, having support from loved ones, and continuing therapy.