The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, Second Edition: What You and Your Family Need to Know - Hardcover

Miklowitz, David J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160623983X ISBN 13: 9781606239834

Verlag: Guilford Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Getting an accurate diagnosis is the first step toward reclaiming your life from bipolar disorder. But if you or someone you love is struggling with the frantic highs and crushing lows of this illness, there are still many hurdles to surmount at home, at work, and in daily life. You need current information and practical problem-solving advice you can count on. You've come to the right place.

* How can you distinguish between early warning signs of bipolar mood swings and normal ups and downs? * What medications are available, and what are their side effects? * What should you do when you find yourself escalating into mania or descending into depression? * How can you tell your coworkers about your illness without endangering your career? * If you have a family member with bipolar disorder, how can you provide constructive help and support? Trusted authority Dr. David J. Miklowitz offers straight talk, true stories, and proven strategies that can help you achieve greater balance and free yourself from out-of-control moods. The updated second edition of this bestselling guide has the latest facts on medications and therapy, an expanded discussion of parenting issues for bipolar adults, and a new chapter, ""For Women Only.""

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David J. Miklowitz, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Medicine, and Senior Clinical Researcher at Oxford University, UK. He directs the Integrative Study Center in Mood Disorders and the Child and Adolescent Mood Disorders Program at the UCLA Semel Institute. Dr. Miklowitz's numerous publications include the award-winning book for professionals Bipolar Disorder: A Family-Focused Treatment Approach. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles.

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The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide

What You and Your Family Need to Know

By David J. Miklowitz

The Guilford Press

Copyright © 2011 The Guilford Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60623-983-4

Contents

Cover, 
Title Page, 
Copyright, 
Preface, 
Part I THE EXPERIENCE AND DIAGNOSIS OF BIPOLAR DISORDER, 
1 How This Book Can Help You Survive—and Thrive, 
2 Understanding the Experience of Bipolar Disorder, 
3 Into the Doctor's Court: Getting an Accurate Diagnosis, 
4 "Is It an Illness or Is It Me?": Coping with the Diagnosis, 
Part II LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR EFFECTIVE TREATMENT, 
5 Where Bipolar Disorder Comes From: Genetics, Biology, and Stress, 
6 What Medications and Psychotherapy Can Do for You, 
7 Coming to Terms with Your Medications, 
Part III PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR STAYING WELL, 
8 Tips to Help You Manage Moods and Improve Your Daily Life, 
9 Heading Off the Escalation of Mania, 
10 Halting the Spiral of Depression, 
11 Overcoming Suicidal Thoughts and Feelings, 
12 For Women Only: What You Need to Know about Bipolar Disorder and Your Health, 
13 Succeeding at Home and at Work: Communication, Problem-Solving Skills, and Dealing Effectively with Stigma, 
Worksheets, 
Resources for People with Bipolar Disorder, 
References, 
Index, 
About the Author, 
About Guilford Publications, 
Discover More Guilford Titles, 

CHAPTER 1

How This Book Can Help You Survive—and Thrive

Why Do You Need This Book?

* To understand the symptoms, diagnosis, and causes of your bipolar disorder

* To learn about effective medical and psychological treatments

* To learn self-management techniques to help you deal with mood cycles

* To improve your functioning in family and work settings

* * *

Martha, 34, ended up in the hospital after storming out of the house, in which she lived with her husband and two school-age children, and spending a disastrous night in a town over two hours away. Her problems, however, had started about two weeks earlier, when she became unusually irritable with her husband, Eric, "slamming about the house," as he described it, and becoming easily provoked by the minor infractions of their children. She then began to sleep less and less and was increasingly preoccupied with many ideas for a new dot-com business she planned to start. Despite this intense focus, Martha seemed very easily distracted. She also began speaking very rapidly.

Her problems came to a head when she left the house in a fury shortly after dinner one night and impulsively took a bus to a gambling casino about 100-miles away. By her account, she met a man at a bar the same night and went to bed with him. The next morning she called her husband, crying, and explained what had happened. Needless to say, he was quite angry and drove to the casino to pick her up. He arrived at the agreed-upon place and time, only to find that Martha was not there, so he returned home—where he found his wife, disheveled, sleep deprived, and angry. After sobbing for several hours, she finally agreed to go with him to be evaluated at a local hospital. She was admitted to the inpatient unit and given a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, manic phase.

Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that affects at least one in every 50 people—and as many as one in 25 by some estimates—and puts them at high risk for the kinds of problems in their family, social, and work lives that Martha suffered. People with bipolar disorder are also at high risk for physical problems, alcohol and substance use disorders, and even suicide. Fortunately, there is much hope. With medications, psychotherapy, and self-management techniques, it's possible to control the rapid shifts in mood from manic highs to severe depressive lows (called mood disorder episodes), prevent future episodes from occurring, decrease the impact of environmental triggers, and cope effectively so that you can enjoy a full life.

Whether you have already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, think you might have this illness, or are concerned about someone who has it, this book will help you understand the disorder and learn to manage it effectively. In the following chapters you'll find up-to-date information on the nature of the disorder, its causes, medical and psychological treatments, and the lifestyle changes you can make to help manage the disorder. The information should be relevant to you whether you have been treated on an inpatient basis, like Martha, or on an outpatient basis, which is becoming more and more common.

Understanding the Facts about Bipolar Disorder: Its Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, and Self–Management

The inpatient physician who saw Martha diagnosed her as bipolar very quickly and recommended a regimen of lithium, a mood-stabilizing medication, and risperidone (Risperdal), an atypical antipsychotic medication. After only a few days it was clear that she was responding well. But when her doctor made plans to discharge her, Martha confronted him with a litany of questions and worries she had about everything that was happening to her. Why was she being given "this death sentence" (her diagnosis) and "drugged and disposed of so quickly"? Why was she being labeled manic, when most of what she had done, she felt, could be attributed to her personality or interpersonal style? "I've always been assertive," she complained to her doctor, her husband, and almost everyone else she saw. "Since when is everything I do a mental illness?" Her doctor responded with sympathy but offered insufficient information to satisfy Martha. Underconsiderable pressure to get people in and out of the hospital quickly, he left her with a list of medications to take but little understanding of what had happened to her or what to expect once she got home.

If you were in Martha's position, in all likelihood you would find the hospital experience as confusing and frustrating as she did. In my experience, people with bipolar disorder and their family members usually are hungry for information about the disorder, particularly during or after a manic or depressive episode, whether or not the episode involves hospitalization. Of course, people with the disorder have an easier time assimilating information about it once they are over the worst of their symptoms. But even during the hospitalization, Martha and her husband would have benefited a great deal from some basic facts: how her doctors knew she had the illness, how the symptoms are experienced by the person with the disorder versus everyone else, and the course of the illness over time. They would have benefited from knowing what to expect after she was discharged from the hospital, including her risks of cycling into new episodes. Without this information, it was difficult for Martha to put her experiences in context. As a result, she began to doubt the accuracy of the diagnosis and, by extension, the wisdom of complying with her prescribed treatments.

A major assumption of this book is that understanding the facts about your disorder will help you accept it and live with it Important questions that often go unanswered because mental health providers simply don't have time include:

* "What are the symptoms of bipolar disorder?"

* "Who am I apart from my disorder?"

* "Where did the illness come from?"

* "How do I know when I'm becoming ill?"

* "What triggers my mood cycles?"

* "What can I do to minimize my chances of becoming ill again?"

* "How do I explain the illness to other people?"

By the end of this book, I hope you'll have gotten useful answers to these questions, together with a more complete understanding of bipolar disorder, a new grasp of who you are and how bipolar disorder fits into your life, and a wealth of illness management techniques. I also hope to leave you

"What can I expect from my future?" knowing where to turn when the future brings new challenges and you need additional information and advice.

Adjusting to the Aftermath of an Episode

Martha left the hospital with prescriptions for lithium and risperidone and an appointment to see a new doctor 2 weeks later. Upon discharge she had agreed to follow the recommendations of the inpatient staff to continue taking her medications, but she knew little about what the medications were doing or exactly what was being medicated. She felt shaky, agitated, and irritable, and became mentally confused. These uncomfortable sensations were largely the result of continuing symptoms of her disorder, but in the absence of any information to the contrary, Martha assumed her confusion was due entirely to the lithium.

She then noticed her mood start to drop, gradually at first. She felt numb, disinterested in things, tired, and unable to sleep even though she desperately wanted to. She began to spend more time during the day "sleep bingeing" to try to catch up from the night before. She awoke in the afternoon feeling worse and had difficulty with her usual responsibilities, such as making dinner or helping the children do their homework. She dreaded interacting with her neighbors. The idea of committing suicide crossed her mind for the first time. She felt guilty about the impact of her disorder on her children and wondered whether they would be better off without her.

Martha developed an upper respiratory infection, which kept her up late at night coughing. Compounding this stress, the neighbors were having work done on their house, and she was awakened from her fitful sleep by noise early in the morning. Her sleep became more and more inconsistent, and her daily and nightly routines—when she went to bed and when she woke up—began to change from day to day.

About a week after being discharged from the hospital, Martha's mood escalated upward again. Her thoughts began to race, and she started to think again about the dot-com business. Then, in what she later described as a "flash," she decided that all of her problems—not just the mental confusion but also her cycling mood, her sleep disturbance, and her lethargy—were caused by the lithium. Without checking with a physician or telling anyone, she lowered her lithium dosage. When she saw no apparent negative results, she discontinued it altogether. She stopped her risperidone next. Martha became severely irritable again, began to sleep less and less, and finally ended up back in the hospital only 3 weeks after her discharge.

Martha's story is all too common. Because the nature of the disorder was not explained fully to her, she thought of the episode as a sort of "nervous breakdown" requiring only temporary medication. She did not understand that the illness could be recurrent. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, you will become familiar with the expected course of bipolar disorder over time and the various forms that mood recurrences can take. This knowledge can help you stick to a treatment and self-management plan that may help stave off recurrences.

Martha also would have benefited from knowledge of the factors that we believe cause the cycling of bipolar disorder: a complex interplay of genetic background, individual biochemistry, and life stress, as discussed in Chapter 5. Many people who have bipolar disorder burden themselves with guilt and self-blame because they believe their mood disorder is caused solely by psychological factors or even sheer weakness of character. Martha could have avoided such self-blame if she had known that her dramatic mood shifts were associated with biological imbalances of brain neurotransmitters and the function of nerve cell receptors. Her experiences would have made more sense to her in the context of her family tree: her mother had depression and her paternal grandfather was hospitalized once for "mental anguish" and "exhaustion."

Knowing about the biological causes of your disorder will also clarify why consistency with your medications is essential to maintaining good mood stability. Martha knew that she needed to take medications, but not why. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with medication treatments for bipolar disorder. There are many drugs available nowadays, in various combinations and dosages. Doctors have to be constantly updated on which treatments to recommend to which patients, since the accepted treatment guidelines for this disorder change so rapidly. You will feel more effective in managing your disorder if you can openly communicate with your physician about which medications are most effective for you, their side effects, and the mixed emotions you may feel about taking them.

Self-Management Strategies

Beyond taking medications and meeting with a psychiatrist, there are good and bad ways to manage your disorder. Self-management involves learning to recognize your own individual triggers for episodes and adjusting your life accordingly. This book will teach you a number of self-management tools that will probably increase the amount of time that your moods remain stable. For example, Martha would have benefited from sleep–wake monitoring or staying on a regular daily and nightly routine, including going to bed and waking at the same time, strategies described in Chapter 8. Likewise, keeping a mood chart (discussed in Chapter 8) would have provided a structure for tracking the day-to-day changes in her emotions and revealed how these changes corresponded with fluctuations in sleep, consistency with her medication regimen, and stressful events. Recall that Martha's worsening mood was precipitated by a respiratory infection and the appearance of neighborhood noise, which were stressful and disrupted her sleep–wake patterns. In addition to recognizing these events as triggers, Martha and her husband could have developed a list of early warning signs that would alert them to the possibility of a new episode of mania. In Martha's case, these signs included irritability and a sudden interest in developing a business. Chapter 9 provides a comprehensive overview of possible early warning signs of mania.

When Martha first started becoming depressed, certain behavioral strategies might have kept her from sinking further, including behavior activation exercises and cognitive restructuring techniques, introduced in Chapter 10. She would have had the support of knowing that suicidal thoughts and feelings—a common component of the bipolar syndrome—can be combated through prevention strategies involving the support of close friends and relatives, counseling, and medications, as described in Chapter 11. She would have understood some of the differences between women and men during the depressed phase (for example, the role of the menstrual cycle and the influence of the postpartum period or menopause), and how to manage some of the health complications that affect women who take mood-stabilizing medications, as discussed in Chapter 12.

Coping Effectively in the Family and Work Settings

Martha spent 5 more days in the hospital but this time was discharged with a clearer follow-up plan. She met the physician who would see her as an outpatient to monitor her medications and blood serum levels. The inpatient social work team also helped arrange an outpatient appointment with a psychologist who specialized in the treatment of mood disorders. This time, she felt better about the hospitalization experience but was quite wary of what would happen once she was back at home.

After her discharge, Martha spoke with close friends about what had happened. They were sympathetic but said things like "I guess everybody's a little bit manic–depressive" and "Maybe you were just working too hard." When she disclosed to one friend that she was taking lithium, the friend said, "Don't get addicted." Although she knew her friends were trying to be supportive, these messages confused her. Was she really ill or just going through a tough time? Were her problems really an illness or just an extreme of her personality? Hadn't the physicians told her that medications were meant to be taken over the long term?

Martha's husband, Eric, seemed unsure of how to relate to her. He genuinely cared about her and wanted to help but frequently became intrusive about issues such as whether she had taken her medications. He pointed out minor shifts in her emotional reactions to things, which formerly would have escaped his notice but which he now relabeled as "your rapid cycling." Martha, in turn, felt she was being told she was "no longer allowed to have normal emotional reactions." She told him, "You can't just hand me a tray of lithium every time I laugh too loud or cry during a movie."

At other times Eric became angry and criticized her for the deterioration in her care of the children. Indeed, she didn't have enough energy to take them to their various activities or get them to school on time. She didn't feel up to the social demands of being a parent. "You aren't trying hard enough," Eric said. "You've got to buck up and beat this thing." At other times he would tell her she shouldn't take on too much responsibility because of her illness. Martha became confused about what her husband expected of her. What neither understood was that most people need a low-key, low-demand period of convalescence after a hospitalization so that they can fully recover from their episode of bipolar disorder.

Her children eyed Martha with suspicion, expecting her to burst into irritable tirades, as she had done prior to her first hospitalization. She began to feel that her family was ganging up on her. The family stress during the aftermath of her episode contributed to her depression and desire to withdraw.

Given the economic pressure her family was under, Martha decided to immediately return to her part-time computer programming job, but felt unable to handle the long commute. When she arrived at work, she stared at the computer screen. "The programs I used to know well now seem like gobbledygook," she complained. She finally told her boss about her psychiatric hospitalizations. He seemed sympathetic at first but soon began pressuring her to return to her prior level of functioning. She felt uncomfortable around her coworkers, who seemed edgy and avoidant as they "handled me with kid gloves." The shifts in work schedules, which had been a regular part of her job before, started to feel like they were contributing to her mood swings.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide by David J. Miklowitz. Copyright © 2011 The Guilford Press. Excerpted by permission of The Guilford Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Guilford Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 160623983X
• ISBN 13: 9781606239834
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 342
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar