With long periods of depression followed by manic mood episodes, bipolar disorder characteristics are the thoughts and mood disorders. Each person is different, depending on each patient, depression or mania can last a long time. Bipolar mania is sometimes called mania or hypo mania (a much lesser form of mania). With those in the hypo mania stage, victims may be irritable, too sensitive with an extremely elevated mood. Victims associated with mania episodes have big plans, involved in many projects and quite talkative. The high risk for bipolar manic victims is the use of alcohol or cocaine.
The use of Anti-Psychotic Drugs
The presence of psychotic thoughts, leading to highly charged emotional responses and judgment errors which can render them incapable of communicating is the main symptoms for those with bipolar mania. It is important before these thoughts get out of control, patients must be given mood stabilizing medicine to control their symptoms. These drugs may include:
Clorazil : First used in Europe in 1971 for the treating schizophrenia. It is the first antipsychotic drug to be developed.
Risperdal: Under this market name, was developed by Janssen-Cilag as an antipsychotic drug for the treatment of schizophrenia. It was later used for mixed and mania episodes and children with autism disease.
Zyprexa: A combination of two drugs fluoxetine Symbyax and FDA approved for antipsychotic and treatment of schizophrenia and later for the treatment of bipolar.
First Line Treatments
The recent practice guidelines, for many doctors the first-line of treatment for severe bipolar manic episodes are:
Lithium: A drug primarily for bipolar mania, is a chemical salts and used as a mood stabilizer.
Valproate: Used in bipolar treatment, it is a replacement to lithium salts and many believe it reverses the brain process and affect the function of the neurotransmitter.
Monotherapy: HAS been approved by FDA for treating bipolar manic and bipolar I victims
Family as a Therapy
A lot of people who are bipolar manic or depressive episodes forget that the first line therapy is a family-focused therapy which can be quite effective for bipolar patients. Bipolar Manic states can be made worse by bad blood running within family members. With this family-focused therapy, all members of the family must help to contribute by trying to manage their individual behaviors so to reduce a catalyst for the symptom to reoccur. The primary goal of this bipolar treatment -family therapy is be alert to the signs and symptoms of bipolar manic symptoms and how to handle it properly when the signs start to appear.
Dialectal Behavior – Therapy
This kind of behavior therapy was first started by Dr. Marsha Linehan in which patients go through different stages of therapy which finally can lead them to taking control of their behaviors. One of the main focus of this therapy is patients learn to accept and control their thought patterns
Reducing behaviors which are self-threatening like being suicidal and other bipolar manic behaviors that obstruct with bipolar treatment is the first stage goals. For manic victims, building on these stages requires skill training.
