Page 26 - Florida Sentinel 12-24-21

Health
When it comes to mental illness, there are plenty of stereotypes. But in reality, mood disorders can be hard to pinpoint—particularly in peo- ple with bipolar disorder symptoms.
Don’t believe what you see in movies. You can’t tell just by looking at someone that they might be bipolar. Take beauti- ful actress Lisa Nicole Car- son, who shared her bipolar disorder with the world. No- body knew before that!
Here are 10 signs that mood problems may be due to more than a quirky or difficult personality:
Bipolar disorder is charac- terized by up-and-down episodes of mania and depres- sion. During a manic phase, some patients can have a total break from reality. But hypo- mania, which is also a symp- tom of the disorder, is a high-energy state in which a person feels exuberant but hasn’t lost his or her grip on re- ality.
“Hypomania can be a pretty enjoyable state, really,” Dr. Bearden says. A person’s mood can be elevated, they may have a lot of energy and creativity, and they may expe- rience euphoria. This is the “up” side of bipolar disorder that some people with the con-
dition actually enjoy—while it lasts.
Inability To Complete Tasks
Having a house full of half- completed projects is a hall- mark of bipolar disorder. People who can harness their energy when they are in a hy- pomanic phase can be really productive. Those who can’t often go from task to task, planning grand, unrealistic projects that are never finished before moving on to something else.
“They can be quite dis- tractible and may start a mil- lion things and never finish them,” says Don Malone, MD, the director of the Center for Behavioral Health and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio.
Depression
A person who is in a bipo- lar depressive state is going to look just like someone who has regular depression. “They have the same problems with en- ergy, appetite, sleep, and focus as others who have ‘plain old depression,’” Dr. Malone says. Unfortunately, typical antidepressants alone don’t work well in patients who are
bipolar. They can even make people cycle more frequently, worsening their condition, or send someone into a break- with-reality episode. “Antide- pressants can be downright dangerous in people with bipo- lar because they can send them into mania,” he says.
Irritability
Some people with this con- dition suffer from “mixed mania,” where they experience symptoms of mania and de- pression at the same time. During this state, they are often extremely irritable. Everyone has bad days, which is one reason this kind of bipo- larity is much harder to recog- nize. “We are all irritable or moody sometimes,” Dr. Bearden says. “But in people with bipolar disorder, it often becomes so severe that it inter- feres with their relationships— especially if the person is saying, ‘I don’t know why I’m so irritable...I can’t control it.’”
Rapid Speech
Some people are naturally talkative; we all know a motor- mouth or Chatty Cathy. But “pressured speech” is one of the most common symptoms of bipolar disorder. This kind of speech occurs when some- one is really not in a two-way conversation, Dr. Bearden says. The person will talk rap- idly and if you try to speak, they will likely just talk over you. They will also sometimes jump around to different top- ics. “What’s kind of a red flag is when it is atypical for the per- son to talk like this,” doing it only when they are in a manic cycle but not at other times, she says.
Problems At Work
People with this disorder often have difficulty in the workplace because so many of their symptoms can interfere with their ability to show up for work, do their job, and in- teract productively with oth- ers. In addition to having problems completing tasks, they may have difficulty sleep- ing, irritability, and an in- flated ego during a manic phase, and depression at other times, which causes excessive sleeping and additional mood problems. A lot of the work- place problems can be inter- personal ones, Dr. Malone says.
Substance Abuse
About 50% of people with bipolar disorder also have a substance abuse problem, particularly alcohol use, Dr. Bearden says. Many people will drink when they are in a manic phase to slow them- selves down and use alcohol to improve their mood when
they are depressed.
Erratic Behavior
When they are in a manic phase, people with bipolar disorder can have an inflated self-esteem. “They feel grandiose and don’t consider consequences; everything sounds good to them,” Dr. Malone says. Two of the most common types of behav- ior that can result from this are spending sprees and un- usual sexual behavior.
Flight of Ideas
This symptom may be something that is hard to rec- ognize, but it occurs fre- quently when someone is in a manic phase. People feel like their mind is racing and that they can’t control or slow down their thoughts. This flight of ideas sometimes oc- curs with pressured speech. People with bipolar may not recognize or admit that their mind is racing out of control, says Dr. Bearden.
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