How to manage bipolar disorder that's what I'm talking about in this video
today. I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and on this channel I talk about mental
health education and self-improvement so in this episode I'm going to be talking
about how to control your bipolar disorder.
Now the mainstay of treatment for bipolar disorder is medication, but I'm
going to be talking about things you can do to help prevent or even manage
symptoms in addition to taking medication. So this is not instead of.
Number one: identify things that trigger an episode either an episode of
depression or mania. Some examples of this would be things like work stress
arguments with family members and a huge one is not getting enough sleep. And it's
pretty common in the spring and the summer for the longer days to trigger a
manic or hypomanic episode it because people will start sleeping less. So you
want to write down these triggers and we'll use them in step six. Number two:
keep a record of your moods in the form of a mood diary. And this doesn't have to
be anything fancy you don't have to go buy a book you could even use the
download that I have for you. I'll have a free download for you on the link will
be in the description of a summary of this video today as well as a few other
forms that I'll be going over. But this first one is the mood diary so you're
going to use this diary to monitor your progress or notice when your moods are
coming on, That's essentially all it is. Number three establish a daily routine
and this is important for anyone because we all need structure but people with
bipolar disorder are particularly sensitive to changes in structure and
routine. So the triggers that we listed in step 1 are some of the things that
can destabilize or disrupt your routine. So here's what a routine should consist
of a few basic things at least so you'd want to have a regular time that you
wake up and a regular time that you go to bed. You also want to have a regular
time frame that you eat your meals. And you should think of these points as
anchor points throughout your day and then all your other activities would be
filled in around those anchor points. Now I realize you're not going to always be
able to control your work and your school schedule but if you don't have these
anchor points, then you never even think about it and then you just have this
kind of free-floating day that just kind of comes and goes however it goes and
that's the kind of thing that can really lead to say sleep deprivation when
you're in a manic episode or starting to get there. And the sleep deprivation is
really what can trigger another or a manic or hypomanic episode. The opposite
problem of an unstructured day is the tendency to sleep all day when you're
depressed. So what do we do to help prevent that problem is number four have
an activity plan that you implement when you start over sleeping or withdrawing
from people when you're in the depressed phase. And it's kind of like having a
disaster management plan in place before the hurricane comes. So let's say your
normal bedtime routine is sleeping from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. but when you're
depressed you're going to bed around 9:00 and waking up around 9:00 in the
morning. And this will be the for the person who's got a flexible work
schedule or maybe you work from home so no one really knows when you're getting
up. When this when you start doing this that's when you pull out your activity
plan which would have things on it like walking the dog, taking a walk around the
neighborhood, going to the library, vacuuming the house. These are just a few
examples, but they're activities that force you to get your body moving even if
you're just slogging through in your depressed state. Because any amount of
activity and movement is an improvement and this is what we call behavioral
activation therapy. It's a little more complicated than this but this is just
one example of it. When you become manic, you'll start going to bed even later and
waking up earlier and so instead of sleeping from say 6 or 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
you start sleeping from 2 to 5 or 2 to 6 and you feel fine. You know... it's not
like you wake up feeling sleep-deprived but the sleep deprivation has the
cumulative effect of churning up a manic state and to combat this you can
implement dark therapy and that's number 5. There's been more studies showing a
connection between bipolar disorder and your body clock and people with bipolar
disorder can be particularly sensitive to the light-dark schedule so an
intervention to help with mania would be - would be the dark therapy and what
this means is keeping yourself in a dark environment from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. for a
total of 14 hours. Now that's what they did in the studies. I know this is
impractical for most people so a substitute actually would be using blue
light blocking glasses from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. And this has the same effect
because it's blocking the blue light which is the light that really affects
your body clock. It's a similar light as sunlight and I have more videos about
the body clock you can take a look there in the upper corner. So in the study
it's where the people use the blue light blocking glasses they use them for seven
days straight or seven nights straight for the 14 hours a day. Now I wear these
every evening not starting at 6:00 p.m. but when I'm relaxing getting ready for
bed, reading or my iPad or watching YouTube videos and I use it to block the
light to keep it or block the blue light that's coming from the device to keep it
from interfering with my sleep and I fall asleep in them. They're not
comfortable but nonetheless I fall asleep in them. For the dark therapy I
would recommend that you wear them for the time that's recommended from 6 p.m.
to 8 a.m. so even if in it you know it takes a little getting used to walking
around in your house wearing sunglasses. They even have ones that if you wear
glasses that can fit over your glasses. These are really inexpensive pair from
Amazon. So going back to the 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. thing if you're driving home at 6
p.m. you're not even home yet put them on in your car that's even
better because when you're driving you're being exposed to the sunlight
particularly in the spring and the summer time. So you need them even more
in the car than you do in your house with the tungsten lighting. So put them
on you wear them all evening long. I doubt that you really need to sleep in
them, but when you wake up you put them back on and keep them on until 8:00 a.m.
and that would be how you could implement dark therapy when you are in a
manic phase or hypomanic phase and not and only sleeping for 3 and 4 hours a
nigh.t The last strategy to control your bipolar disorder is to have a relapse
prevention plan. And this is where you would pull out the triggers that we
discussed in step 1 and use them at this point and you probably want to get the
help of your therapist or doctor to help you brainstorm through some strategies
to help you either avoid the triggers altogether or to help you be less
reactive to them. Now this is not a guarantee that you'll
never ever have another episode but it can make the difference in the severity
of the episodes or even the timing of the next episode because bipolar
disorder is a biological illness that's not solely dependent on your
environmental stresses or triggers but there is the potential to reduce the
number of episodes that you have or the severity of them by controlling your
triggers. I hope this was helpful for you. I have the package for you that you can
download just click on the link in the description and it includes a mood diary
trigger worksheet an activity plan and a relapse prevention worksheet. If you like
this video, click like and leave me a comment. Let me know what you think.