Manic Depressive Psychosis
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Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament $4.81 The anguished and volatile intensity associated with the artistic temperament was once thought to be a symptom of genius or eccentricity peculiar to artists, writers and musicians. Kay Jamison's work, based on her study as a clinical psychologist and researcher in mood disorders, reveals that many artists subject to exalted highs and despairing lows were in fact engaged in a struggle with clinical... |
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Medicines for Mental Health: The Ultimate Guide to Psychiatric Medication $9.50 If you suffer from sexual dysfunction, depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or care for someone who does, then this book was written for you. Medicines for Mental Health is the first book to provide detailed and readable information about all psychiatric medications, and other medical treatments, for these mental illnesses. Medicines cuts through the jargon, demystifies your illness, ex... |
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Hurry Down Sunshine $1.66 Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Michael Greenberg's spare, unflinching memoir begins with a bang: "On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad." Hurry Down Sunshine chronicles the summer when fifteen-year-old Sally experienced her first full-blown manic episodean event that in a "single stroke" changed her identity and, by extension, that of her entire family. Simply told and beautiful... |
Fires of the Mind: Manic Depressive Illness
Reducing Manic Depression Symptoms
It's hard even for doctors to diagnose bipolar disorder. What distinguishes bipolar disorder from unipolar depression is that the affected person experiences states of both mania and depression.
Here's several other reasons why manic depression is so hard to diagnose:
1. Often bipolar is inconsistently expressed among patients because some people feel mostly depression and experience little mania whereas others experience predominantly manic symptoms, with much less depression.
2. Plus, when manic depression shows up early in life, the first few episodes are much more likely to be depression, rather than mania, which usually shows up later in life. Which means the patient will likely be diagnosed as having unipolar depression rather than bipolar depression.
Since a diagnosis of bipolar requires some sort of manic episode, patients are often first diagnosed and treated only for major depression, rather than bipolar depression.
The severity of the mania determines how the disorder is classified. Mania is generally characterized by a distinct period of an elevated mood, which can take the form of euphoria. People commonly experience an increase in energy and a decreased need for sleep, with many often getting as little as 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night, while others can go days without sleeping
Hypomania is generally a mild to moderate level of mania, characterized by optimism, elevated speech and activity, and decreased need for sleep. While mania can interfere with the normal living of life, hypomania generally does not.
To be diagnosed with manic depression (now called bipolar disorder) a person would be expected to have at least three of the following seven symptoms:
1. An unrealistically high sense of self esteem, along with grandiose thoughts and feelings
2. Reduced need for sleep
3. Extreme talkativeness
4. Extremely rapid flight of thoughts; feeling the mind is racing
5. Inability to concentrate; easily distracted
6. Extremely active in work or social functions
7. Making poor decisions such as with money or intimacy
Lithium has been the standard treatment for those who experience manic depression. Various antidepressants are frequently combined with lithium. Many people, however, can't tolerate lithium.
One of the ways lithium relieves manic depression symptoms is by promoting increased brain levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Other mood-stabilizing medications include valproic acid and Lamictal.
Besides lithium and other mood stabilizing medication, antipsychotics are also used to help those with bipolar disorder.
Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medicine, is approved by the FDA for schizophrenia, acute mixed or manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and maintenance treatment in bipolar disorder.
Zyprexa can cause extremely unpleasant side effects such as diabetes, severe anxiety, tardive dyskinesia, (where your muscles spasm uncontrollably - sometimes irreversibly) and excessive weight gain. Loss of libido is another common side effect from taking Zyprexa.
Various other antipsychotic medicines are also used for bipolar, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel, and Geodon.
Symbyax is classified as an antidepressant, but it's actually a combination of Prozac and Zyprexa. Like all other drugs, especially those used to treat mood disorders, Symbyax comes with potentially serious side effects, such as fatigue, loss of libido, and weight gain.
As an alternative to prescription antidepressants, 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) has been shown in scientific studies to be just as effective without the numerous side effects of depression medications. 5-HTP can be safely combined with lithium to reduce manic depression symptoms.
Hair samples of manic patients contain elevated levels of the heavy metal vanadium. When an effected individual no longer displays manic symptoms, vanadium levels fall back into what is considered a normal range.
Those with unipolar depression have normal vanadium levels in their hair samples, but elevated levels in their blood. Once their depression is in remission, their vanadium levels also return to normal.
A person's mood seems to be tied in with the amount of vanadium in their body. By reducing vanadium levels, one double blind scientific study was able to produce significant improvement in manic depression symptoms. Their secret? They found a common nutrient present in many foods alters the chemical structure of vanadate to the less harmful vanadyl.
To find out how they did it, go to this site on manic depression symptoms.
