Bipolar Disorder
While everyone has variations in their emotional state Bipolar disorder is a specific mood disorder that drastically affects how you feel about life and those around you from day to day, or even within a day. Typically, the sufferer might swing between being in a manic state (feeling exuberant or high) and then plunge quite rapidly into a depressive episode, to the point where they feel extremely low and listless. Some people report that in extreme moments they might suffer some ‘psychotic’ symptoms, for example become quite paranoid, convinced that malevolent things are going on around them, or by contrast feel that good things are destined to happen irrespective of the circumstances, and then proceed to make drastic decisions on this basis.
While there are now various medications available to help control the condition and help level out the most extreme effects, psychological therapies are often prescribed as a means of addressing the underlying causes as well as manage the effects over the longer term. Treatments such as CBT can help identify how thoughts and behaviours interact with each other, with the view to changing particularly destructive cycles. Other longer-term, more interpersonally based interventions, such as psychoanalytic psychotherapy, can help highlight the roots of these feelings in past events or childhood even, with the view to addressing the underlying dispositions that fuel the condition.
