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Bipolar Disorder: What Is It?

Posted in daily writings and musings of the psychologist, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Bipolar disorder, sometimes called manic depression, is a disorienting condition that causes extreme shifts in mood. Like riding a slow-motion roller coaster, patients may spend weeks feeling like they’re on top of the world before plunging into a relentless depression. The length of each high and low varies greatly from person to person. In any given year, bipolar disorder affects more than 2% of American adults.

Depressive Phase Symptoms: Without treatment, a person with bipolar disorder may experience intense episodes of depression. Symptoms include sadness, anxiety, and loss of energy, hopelessness, and difficulty concentrating. Patients may lose interest in activities that were once pleasurable. They may gain or lose weight, sleep too much or too little, and contemplate suicide.

Manic Phase Symptoms: During a manic phase, patients tend to feel euphoric and may believe they can accomplish anything. This can result in inflated self-esteem, agitation, and reduced need for sleep, being more talkative, being easily distracted, and a sense of racing thoughts. Reckless behaviors, including spending sprees, sexual indiscretions, fast driving, and substance abuse, are common. Having three or more of these symptoms nearly having three or more of these symptoms nearly every day for a week may indicate a manic episode.

Bipolar I vs. Bipolar II: People with bipolar I disorder have manic episodes or mixed episodes and often have one or more depressive episodes. People with bipolar II have major depressive episodes with less severe mania; they experience hypomania, a condition that is less intense than mania or lasting less than a week. Patients may seem like the “life of the party” — full of charm and humor. They may feel and function fine, even if family and friends can see the mood swing. However, hypomania can lead to mania or depression.

Mixed Episode: People with mixed episode experience depression and mania at the same time. This leads to unpredictable behavior, such as sadness while doing a favorite activity or feeling very energetic. It’s more common in people who develop bipolar disorder at a young age, particularly during adolescence. But some estimates suggest up to 70% of bipolar patients experience mixed episodes.

Causes of Bipolar Disorder: Doctors aren’t exactly sure what causes bipolar disorder. A leading theory is that brain chemicals fluctuate abnormally. When levels of certain chemicals become too high, the patient develops mania. When levels drop too low, depression may result.

Bipolar Disorder: Who’s at Risk? Bipolar disorder affects males and females equally. In most cases, the onset of symptoms is between 15 and 30 years old. People are at higher risk if a family member has been diagnosed, especially if it’s a first degree relative, but doctors don’t think the disorder kicks in based on genetics alone. A stressful event, drug abuse, or other unknown factor may trigger the cycle of ups and downs.

Bipolar Disorder and Daily Life: Bipolar disorder can disrupt your goals at work and at home. In one survey 88% of patients said the illness took a toll on their careers. The unpredictable mood swings can drive a wedge between patients and their co-workers or loved ones. In particular, the manic phase may scare off friends and family. People with bipolar disorder also have a higher risk of developing anxiety disorder

Bipolar Disorder and Substance Abuse: About 60% of people with bipolar disorder have trouble with drugs or alcohol. Patients may drink or abuse drugs to relieve the uncomfortable symptoms of their mood swings. This is especially common during the reckless manic phase.

Bipolar Disorder and Suicide

People with bipolar disorder are 10 to 20 times more likely to commit suicide than people without the illness. Warning signs include talking about suicide, putting affairs in order, and inviting death with risky behavior. Anyone who appears suicidal should be taken very seriously. Do not hesitate to call us at 09179383554 or the government helplines available free of charge in emergency situations.

Diagnosing Bipolar Disorder: A crucial step in diagnosing bipolar disorder is to rule out other possible causes of extreme mood swings. These may include brain infection or other neurological disorders, substance abuse, thyroid problem, HIV, ADHD, side effects of certain medications, or other psychiatric disorders. There is no lab test for bipolar disorder. A psychiatrist usually makes the diagnosis based on a careful history and evaluation of the patient’s mood and other symptoms.

Medications for Bipolar Disorder: Medications are key in helping people with bipolar disorder live stable, productive lives. Mood stabilizers can smooth out the cycle of ups and downs. Patients may also be prescribed antipsychotic drugs and anticonvulsant drugs. Between acute states of mania or depression, patients typically stay on maintenance medication to avoid a relapse.

Talk Therapy for Bipolar Disorder: Talk therapy can help patients stay on medication and cope with their disorder’s impact on work and family life. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on changing thoughts and behaviors that accompany mood swings. Interpersonal therapy aims to ease the strain bipolar disorder may place on personal relationships. Social rhythm therapy helps patients develop and maintain daily routines.

Lifestyle Tips for Bipolar Disorder: Establishing firm routines can help manage bipolar disorder. Routines should include sufficient sleep, regular meals, and exercise. Because alcohol and recreational drugs can worsen the symptoms, these should be avoided. Patients should also learn to identify their personal early warning signs of mania and depression. This will allow them to get help before an episode spins out of control.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Electroconvulsive therapy can help some people with bipolar disorder. ECT uses an electric current to cause a seizure in the brain. It is one of the fastest ways to ease severe symptoms. ECT is usually a last resort when a patient does not improve with medication or psychotherapy.

Educating Friends and Family:Friends and family may not understand bipolar disorder at first. They may become frustrated with the depressive episodes and frightened by the manic states. If patients make the effort to explain the illness and how it affects them, loved ones may become more compassionate. Having a solid support system can help people with bipolar disorder feel less isolated and more motivated to manage their condition.

When Someone Needs Help: Many people with bipolar disorder don’t realize they have a problem or avoid getting help. If you’re concerned about a friend or family member, here are a few tips for broaching the subject. Point out that millions have bipolar disorder, and that it is a treatable illness — not a personality flaw. There is a medical explanation for the extreme mood swings, and effective treatments are available.

Courtesy : http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/ss/slideshow-bipolar-disorder-overview

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GET UP AND GET GOING -5

Posted in daily writings and musings of the psychologist, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“Everest is not a mountain you climb in a day” said Krushna Patil second youngest Indian woman who had summitted the highest peak. She had said this   in her interview to HT. And we got to trust and believe her because she has achieved what many cannot even dream of. Similar sentiments can be echoed for any other project that we want to achieve in our life.  Our dreams and desires, our aspirations and ambitions can be achieved provided we know what we want and how do we approach life to go for it. It may not happen in a day certainly but if and when we are able to achieve this, it will give us a great high as it must have given to Krushna when she had summitted the peak for the first time.

It is an agreed fact that a positive and objective mind set is the prerequisite to high achievements in life but besides the positivity of the mind it is also the preparation of the spirit and body to put in our best of toil, sweat and tears in the achievement of any task that we set out to do for ourselves in our lives.

They say that Rome was not built in a day but they should also say that Rome was built by intelligent planning and foresight, by deploying men and material who had toiled for years together to build a town we commemorate as Rome today. The beauty of Rome obviously attracts all of the mankind today also to utter such epithets for its praise.

I am tempted here to borrow another sentence from the article of Colleen Braganza (the article appeared in Hindustan Times June14, 2009) where the author writes about the summiteers of the Mount Everest,” You do not conquer Mount Everest .The mountain allows you to climb her “. Life too allows us to live it the way we want to live. A good, healthy, peaceful life full of happiness and mirth for all. However as the mountain does not allow any climber   to take to it lightly, same way the life expects some seriousness from us . The mountain wants climbers to have respect for its highs and lows, the peaks and slopes and walk over them with a climbers’ discipline; same way life too tells us to develop a healthy attitude towards the ups and downs, the stills and the   movements that our day to day living brings into our folds. It wants us to adopt a   salubrious attitude that displays neither overt exhilaration nor jubilation over the minor achievements nor a depressing passivity and submission to the major upheavals. The life will then expect us to get into the nascent hope of climbing yet another of its peak after coming out of the previous palate of high or low served by it to us on the platter. The climbers many a times have to strategically assess their position on  way to the peak of the mountain and decide whether to stay put at one place , to move forward, or even take a step backward to let the weather clear up before they start climbing again . The same way   we too have to devise our strategies to meet our career and life’s ambitions. Moving forward appears   good and keeps everyone associated with us happy except possibly our healthy rivals. But it is always the stagnation or the need to take a step backward that causes ripples into the society in which we live and spend our 24 hours every day. It could either have raised eyebrows or the depressive sounds of false sympathy.

But the warriors of life and the climbers of the peaks should not pay heed to such sounds and ripples. They should rather rededicate themselves to the task of building up bridges and tunnels again to clear up their road to success and glory that life allows them to achieve .And to do   that we will have to first of all take out the fear of losing out. We must not allow our minds to get colored by the elephis of suspicions and doubts on our own capabilities .We must  clear all kinds of cobwebs of non achievements from our mindsets by believing that we and only we are capable of bringing  magnificence and greatness back into our lives by the solemn commitment to build up our lives again.

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GET UP AND GET GOING -4

Posted in daily writings and musings of the psychologist, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Practically there is no one who has not been hit hard by the recession. Its vagaries can be seen from the  dwindling crowds  on the shop floors of shopping malls, to the  shortening of the  queues on the airlines check-in counters, to the shrinking of the kitchen and household shopping of many families  on account of  their  reduced incomes.  The economies of not only the businesses but even the common families have  gone hay wire. The salary slips suddenly vanishing  lead to bank balances and savings vanishing in no time , but giving in to the pressures and adopting a passive attitude can further aggravate the problem and one can get into depression. So what do we do ? Many of us will obviously pose  this question .

The best thing that we can do is to take it in the correct perspective that it is time to either  upgrade or to diversify our skills . There must be  many things  we had not done in life before but have always talked about  doing , to  our friends and families.  It could be expanding on some hobby, taking to some other  profession related to our skills or it could be even upgrading our academics . But that can be organised only if we remain positive and objective in our approach towards every thing in our life.

I have always spoken about getting into teaching in a business  school to my family and friends during my long career of 28 years in  marketing.   Yet  I did not have the courage to quit  the well heeled and oiled job.Though I had been adding my own bit to the education field by writing seven  books on Marketing and getting them published by the best publishers of the world ,  as a hobby . All this had been done during my tenure as a corporate manager. I had also picked up an additional  degree in management almost ten years ago more to satisfy my curiosity about new concepts in management rather than anything else.

Recently when I had faced challenges  in my  corporate career, I looked at this juncture in my life as a God sent opportunity to convert my talks into practical action. I had prepared myself to take life head on  and fight back  the negativity of a depressing  recession. The first thing that I have done is to adopt  a positive attitude. This  positive attitude is all prevading . I do not allow my family   also to get into any kind of negative reminiscensing of the life that we have just had and left behind. The result is that I have got a great opening for myself   into   a profession that I had always wanted to get into i.e. teaching in a good business school.  I also have another book of mine ready for release withing a week or so. It is obvious life has turned better once again.  It is  definitely the positive thinking that has activated the law of attraction in my life. I wish all of us get inot the positive thinking and attract the best things of our choice into our lives.

Think positive , get up and get going is all I can wish all my friends . Believe me  that every good  thing that you have ever wanted will start materialising the moment you turn positive. Just get going.

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GET UP AND GET GOING – Part 3

Posted in daily writings and musings of the psychologist, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Mankind has always courageously and fearlessly faced all kinds of extremities, annihilation, natural calamities and man-made disasters. Many a civilizations have gone down the mounds of earth or into the annals of fire on account of atrocities committed by one tribe over the other. Many a nations have been virtually eliminated from the surface of this earth by the cruel hands of time.  Yet man has existed and grown from the pre-stone age to the modern jet age due to his resilience, the stronger willpower, steely determination and the fortitude   to get back yet stronger and more powerful. The human minds have been made all the more potent and effective by each stroke of adversity. In this entire game of playing hide and seek with death and destruction man has never stopped empowering himself with the inbuilt armament of resolve and tenacity. The recent upheavals of financial misfortune are nothing when we all think of the wealth each nation possesses today. We today have in abundance the wealth of young and inquisitive minds, the wealth of shared knowledge and the wealth of international cooperation in construction and rebuilding of the disintegrating institutions. What we need to have is the faith in humanity, the love for individual and the respect for human capacity to put back in place the lost kingdoms.

I am reminded of a small incident of my early childhood days when we used to live in houses with lots of half open ventilators in each room. Young birds and sparrows will find it very convenient to build their nests in small nooks and corners of the rooms in our home flying in and out of the half open ventilators. Their chirping and singing the bird tunes always sounded like a sweet music to our adolescent ears. But these birds were also creating a nuisance for our mother who used to be very meticulous and fastidious in maintaining cleanliness all around the house.  Each season it used to be a constant fight ensuing between the young birds and our mother. Our mother will direct the servants almost once a week to throw away many kind of tidbits, the cloth cuttings, the broomsticks   and the small paper shreds that the birds would collect to build their nests behind the curtain rods, the ceiling fans’ canopies and the top of the  wooden cupboards. The poor birds will look at my mother and her retinue of servants pitiably and sadly asking for some kind of mercy to spare their small worlds so that they could lay their eggs and bring into this world their inheritors. But to no avail. Does that mean that the birds will fly away? No way, these birds will stay put in our house and with a re-determination will begin bringing in more material   discarded by the denizens of the man’s land to build with it their nests again. Within a few hours, next morning these birds would build their shell again and look chidingly at our mother. Eventually mother had to give in and allow them to stay in there till their youngest ones were hatched out of the eggs and had grown strong enough to fly out of the windows. She would in due course start the same exercise all over again with other pairs of birds the next season.

But what message my immature mind could understand and imbibe was that a small frail bird had more firmness, persistence and tenacity than many of the humans. It did not get discouraged. It would not get disheartened and depressed even when her or his entire world had been destroyed. It would simply get up and get going without giving the catastrophe a second thought, because it knew that the life is too short and beautiful to be allowed to be destroyed in dismay and despair. One must just get up and get going …………..

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Dealing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Posted in daily writings and musings of the psychologist, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

“She sleeps early  in the evening and gets up around midnight  . She is compulsively obsessed with the thought of cleaning her entire house every night . She will wake up her kids and husband , disturb  them    from their sound sleep and carry out with her task of washing and sleeping irrespective of the fact that her  act causes distract and distraught to her family members”.

“This man is always anxious that   he has not been able to  achieve any thing in  his life and hence the very thought disturbs him leading him to weeping anxiety about himself. He often gets up in the middle of the night thinking some thing will happen to his family and hence  double checks that every thing  is in order”  .

” She knows that she is in love with him but she is obsessed with the thought that  he does not match up to  her good looks and family standards , hence she loses her   peace of mind and gets up  in the middle of-the night worrying  about the opinion of family and friends”.

Every individual has a sense of anxiety and mistrust inbuilt within the personality. It is many a times noticed that people  occasionally have to go back and double-check that  the gas stove has been put off, car doors have been locked , a tap has been closed or a  fan has been switched off .  There is nothing to worry if it is done as a gesture of ensuring safety.   But for    some of those   people who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the degree of their obsessive feelings and repetitive compulsive behavior become very dominating and extreme. Their thoughts and the desire to perform same tasks repeatedly and obsessively interfere with their daily routine making it difficult to lead a normal family life.

The person, who suffers from the obsessive-compulsive disorder, may feel isolated, helpless, anxious and irritated and feel compelled to perform the same rituals, tasks and actions over and over again. His or her  anxiety may lead to many kinds of personality disorders, depression and a sense of inadequacy. Such obsessive disorder may need psychological, psychiatric and clinical help depending upon the intensity of OCD.   The first help is always obtained by understanding as to what  is obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)?

 Understanding Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:  (OCD) is a form of an anxiety disorder. It gets expressed in individual sufferers   by way of uncontrollable, unwanted thoughts appearing in their minds repetitively and accompanied by their ritualized behaviors; the individual may feel compelled to perform. The person having OCD, may recognize the fact his or her obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are absurd. But even so, the sufferer is unable to resist them and break free.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) becomes the cause of the brain getting engaged time and again on a particular thought or urge. For example, the person may  wash hands  repeatedly  until the hands get hurt , or may go back to car garage time and again to check that the car doors have been locked , may bite the nails so much that the fingers turn red and bloodied , may  rub hands in despair and even may  sweep floors , wash the dirt of the furniture repeatedly.

How to spot OCD

People with OCD normally have unreasonable fears (called obsessions) which they try to reduce by performing certain behaviours (called compulsions).

OCD is thought to affect around 2.3% of people at some point in their lives.

Most people develop symptoms before they are twenty-years-old.

Perhaps the most familiar example is people repeatedly washing their hands (a compulsion) to avoid getting a disease (an obsession).

That said, though, some people are considered to have OCD despite ‘only’ having obsessions or ‘only’ having compulsions.

Around 70% have both obsessions and compulsions, 20% just obsessions and 10% compulsions alone.

As with most psychological problems, OCD involves normal fears which are taken to extreme.

It’s perfectly normal to be worried about disease, but extremely inconvenient to wash your hands 300 times a day.

Both obsessions and compulsions are a matter of degree.

Once it’s causing problems in everyday life, it needs addressing.

Here are some common obsession:

  1. Need for orderliness and symmetry.
  2. Fear of dirt or contamination by germs.
  3. Excessive doubt.
  4. Fear of sinful or evil thoughts.
  5. Fear of making a mistake.
  6. Fear of harming another person.
  7. Thinking about acting inappropriately or shouting obscenities.

Here are some typical compulsions:

  1. Getting mentally ‘stuck’ on certain images or thoughts that won’t go away.
  2. Repeated hand-washing, showering or bathing.
  3. Repeating particular words or phrases.
  4. Always arranging things in a certain way.
  5. Constant counting during routine tasks, whether mentally or out loud.
  6. Performing tasks a certain number of times.
  7. Always checking things like locks or ovens.
  8. Collecting or hoarding things with no value.

Most people are fully aware that their thoughts and/or behaviours are unreasonable, some are not.

Stress normally makes the symptoms of OCD worse.

Around one-third of people with OCD also make repeated sudden movements or sounds.

These are called ‘tics’.

It’s not known exactly what causes OCD, but it’s likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

In other words: it runs in the family and it’s likely brought on by stress.

Typically, people are treated with medication and cognitive-behavioural therapy.

There’s some question over whether medication really helps much.

Psychological therapies, though, are usually helpful.

Therapy often involves learning to tolerate anxiety without performing the ritualised behaviour.

While most people are not cured, the majority can learn to manage the symptoms and live a normal life.

After treatment, most people see a substantial reduction in their symptoms.

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