Any advice for the partner of someone diagnosed with Manic Depression?
Question:
Answers:
No standing. Make sure your safety harness is fastened and snug. Please keep your hands inside the ride at all times. Life on a roller coaster can be fun. If you prefer a flatter ride their are medications to lower the hills and raise the valleys. Just remember you already know him and love him. The diagnosis itself should not be allowed to change the relationship. A diagnosis should be seen simply as a label used by professionals to aid them in their treatment of an individual.
Other Answers:
One word - Lithium!
no drugs! watch the diet Get on meds?
Seek a therapist or a group.
Find another partner, quickly. Before he takes you with him.
Don't ignore him, try and coerce him into killing himself, then he'll be able to chill He needs maximum support to overcome this illness. Try ans spend as much time as u can with him. And please, respect his emotions, do not laugh at his illness. Also, let the doc decide further course of action.
Bipolar (Manic-Depressive) Disorder
Treatment
Mood charting
The usefulness of mood charting for complex or treatment-resistant cases cannot be overemphasized. Some clinicians are mildly uncomfortable with using structured tools like this, feeling they tend to be a Procrustean bed onto which the treatment must be painfully fitted. While no checklist can capture a clinical picture perfectly, the advantages of using mood charting far outweigh its limitations if a patient is not responding to first-line treatments. Mood charting makes it possible to follow in great detail the patient's mood and relate it to a variety of variables in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
A sample mood chart is available here, adapted from one used by Sachs' MGH Bipolar Clinic. Charting assists in the tracking of medication use, mood, sleep, menstrual cycle, and other symptoms, as an invaluable aid for the psychopharmacologist's prescribing. It also becomes an ongoing reminder for the patient of the existence of his/her illness and the importance of monitoring and managing it with the team. Generally, patients rapidly come to appreciate its usefulness and become committed to filling out the charts faithfully. Failing to fill out mood charts is sometimes an early sign of trouble in the treatment alliance, though it can also result from anergic depression or disorganization.
A note about sleep. Sleep deprivation can precipitate mania. (It is a proven - if temporary - cure for depression.) Patients and their families should be educated about the high risk for mood disruption that is incurred when sleep hygiene is not maintained. A regular sleep/wake schedule should be followed, and alterations of sleep should be noted and reported. Mood charting is very useful for monitoring this.
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Mood stabilizers
There is no agreed-upon definition of the term "mood stabilizer!" We all use the term, but it is nowhere officially defined. Sachs proposes: an agent that has efficacy in at least one of the primary treatment objectives (acute mania, acute depression, prophylaxis) that does not worsen an acute episode and does not increase affective switching.
In many cases more than one mood stabilizer will be necessary for full control of mood episodes. Serial trials of agents one after another is certainly the recommended way to begin treatment, but often adding a small dose of another agent can add considerably to therapeutic effect. Robert Post at NIMH has been an advocate of this approach, observing that at times using concurrent medications in lower doses can have synergistic therapeutic effects while avoiding side effects from any single med. Some patients do not fully respond until three or even four mood stabilizers are used concurrently, with full therapeutic doses of each.
Because polypharmacy is often necessary in bipolar treatment, an organized approach to the psychopharmacology of these patients is crucial. Except in very acute (usually inpatient) situations, one should not change or add more than one drug at a time, as this will obscure the evaluation of both response and side effects. Careful attention should be paid to drug interactions that affect dosing (e.g., CBZ lowers VPA levels, VPA raises LTG levels). Doses should be pushed to the maximum suggested or tolerated before concluding there is no benefit. Sufficient time should be given for any clinical improvement; pressure from the patient to move faster should be resisted as much as possible, since almost invariably this will complicate the picture with needless polypharmacy and/or premature conclusions of inefficacy. Keep in mind the rule of thumb that approximately five half-lives is required for a drug to achieve steady state — this becomes important for drugs with long half-lives, like zonisamide, which will not equilibrate until nearly two weeks after a dose change. Usually in mood disorders a minimum of 4 weeks after equilibration at maximal doses is necessary to have any confidence of full clinical effect.
An inadequate trial of a medication — either insufficient dose or too brief a course — is worse than no trial at all, since at best it is a waste of time and at worst it may permanently remove from consideration a potentially useful agent. "I already tried that, Doc -- it didn't help at all."
Mood charting is by far the best way of assessing response. Often patients report feeling "no better" globally when mood charting reveals that cycling frequency or amplitude is improving, which occurs typically well before any return to euthymia. In fact, months may be required for final stabilization of mood on the correct regimen.
A question that comes up often from patients is how long to stay on a mood stabilizing regimen. Current guidelines recommend 6-12 months after euthymia for bipolar I with 1-2 mild to moderate manic episodes (though some clinicians would be more ready to recommend longer term treatment even in this case), and indefinitely for bipolar I with >2 manic episodes or one manic episode if severe or with a strong family history of bipolar disorder. When stopping mood stabilizers, the taper should be done over 1-3 months. For bipolar II disorder, the Expert Consensus Guidelines recommend indefinite treatment after 3 episodes of hypomania or antidepressant-induced mania. The prevailing data suggests that there is a positive correlation between number of previous affective episodes and the development of treatment-resistance, so the decision to stop medications must be recognized as incurring significant long-term risk.
A note about mood cycling: Cycling does not necessarily imply phases of (hypo)mania followed by phases of depression. The cycling may consist solely of episodes of depression; with a past history of mania or hypomania, such patients are still bipolar, and the same criteria apply — the frequency of episodes is significant and should be monitored, and more than four episodes per year qualifies as rapid cycling. In addition, the pattern of cycling may be significant, since there is some evidence that with patients with either predominant depression or an "MDE" pattern (mania followed by depression followed by euthymia) the course and response to treatment may be different compared to those with "DME" pattern (see below).
A note about "compliance": Often a patient will present with hypomania announcing s/he stopped meds "because I didn't think I needed them any more." Don't mistake the cart for the horse in this situation - probe for the possibility that mild breakthrough hypomania resulted in some grandiosity that led to discontinuation of meds, rather than the other way around. If so, instead of simply restarting medications that were not fully effective, one should perhaps add or change mood stabilizers.
Living with someone who has manic depression is not easy.
The mood swings might not always make you laugh and if you are able to be what you think is supportive the person involved with the illness might find it intrusive.
Learning to see the warning signs always helps and if you are able to offer constructive support that helps.
Also my strongest advise is for you to not neglect your own needs live your own life and find self help otherwise you might become ill and this is no good to either of you.
Monitoring medication and making sure your partner takes his medicine can be a strain on both of you.
Talking should be done during the periods of wellness.
Looking after people is very commendable but please please remember you also need a life .
Good luck
hi there, i suffer from, its now called Bi Polar affected disorder, i was sectioned nearly 5 yrs ago, am on medication and have a good understanding of how it feels to be in that position and how others deal with it too as my children and friends know me well. if i can help in any way pease feel free to email me and maybe i can help in some way. Wickedness, injustice, grief, pessimism, trouble, loneliness, fear, stress, frustration, distrust, unscrupulousness, anxiety, rage, jealousy, resentment, drug addiction, immorality, gambling, prostitution, hunger, poverty, social corruption, theft, war, struggle, violence, oppression, fear of death… News about these issues appear in the newspapers and on TV every day. The popular press devotes entire pages to these subjects, while others serialise articles about their psychological and social aspects. However, our acquaintance with these feelings is not limited solely to the press; in daily life, we, too, frequently come across such problems and, more importantly, personally experience them.
People and societies endeavour to liberate themselves from the distressing experiences, disorder and repressive social structures that have prevailed over the world for long periods. We only need to glance at ancient Greece; the Great Roman Empire; Tsarist Russia, or the so-called Age of Enlightenment, and even the 20th century-a century of misery which saw two world wars and world-wide social disasters. No matter upon which century or location you concentrate your research, the picture will not be appreciably different.
If this is the case, why haven't people succeeded in solving these problems, or at least some efforts been made to remove such social diseases from society?
People have encountered these problems in all ages, yet each time they have failed to find any solutions because the methods they employed were inappropriate. They sought various solutions, tried different political systems, laid down impracticable and totalitarian rules, stirred up revolutions or subscribed to perverted ideologies, while many others preferred to adopt an indifferent attitude and merely accepted the status quo.
In our day, people are almost numbed by this way of living. They readily believe these problems to be "facts of life." They picture a society immune to these problems as being nothing short of impossible-a dream utopia. They persistently and openly express their distaste for such a way of living, yet easily embrace it, since they think they have no other alternative.
The resolution of all these problematic issues is possible only by living by the principles of the "true religion." Only when the values of true religion prevail can a pleasant and tranquil scene replace this gloomy and unfavourable picture, which is doomed to continue so long as God's limits are ignored. To put it another way, people are enslaved by these complications as long as they avoid the values of the Qur'an. Put simply, this is the "nightmare of disbeliefe" and the link below for this wonderful book:
http://harunyahya.net/popup/Download.php?WorkNumber=256&Format=pdf
you will find how the regulation of life by the "norms of morality" introduced by the Qur'an revealed to mankind by God will banish the "nightmare of disbelief," how pessimism, corruption and social restlessness can be eliminated from society, how the individual can surround himself with an ideal environment, what spiritual and material benefits he is likely to attain by adherence to these norms of morality are gone into in detail, and finally, that the unique alternative to all these problems is the morality of the Qur'an.
So far, many books have attempted to deal with the social and psychological problems societies face. Yet, what distinguishes this book from others is its stress on the most realistic solution. It also sincerely warns people against the troublesome future they are likely to face if they fail to resort to this solution.
We expect that every reader of conscience will grasp that peace, mutual trust and an ideal social life is attainable only by embracing the values of the Qur'an and will turn to the true religion, which is Islam.
They will then happily join the ranks of those who never suffer, mentally or physically, from any of the above-mentioned complications. Around them, there will always be an abundance of favours, comfort, love, respect, peace and confidence, and moral virtues will prevail. They will know how to earn God's approval, by observing His limits and the commandments of the Qur'an. They will thus, by having faith in God, attain His mercy and at last enter Paradise.
Useful link:
(A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM)
http://www.islam-guide.com/islam-guide.pdf
My e-mail:
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smiling4ever333@yahoo.com
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