Bipolar Disorder: Expert Guides and Resources

Bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder often share many of the same symptoms — mood shifts, emotion dysregulation, impulsivity. Prior to settling on a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, your doctor should consider borderline personality disorder, among other conditions with symptoms that overlap with those of bipolar disorder.

To be a savvy consumer in the world of doctors and therapists, you have to assess your caregiver's credentials and qualifications, make informed treatment choices for your bipolar disorder, determine how you can tell if treatment is working, and know what to do if you begin feeling worse.This article provides a list of questions to ask a psychiatrist or therapist to obtain the information you need.

When choosing whether to take the name-brand or generic version of a medication for bipolar disorder, you and your doctor may want to consider the possible differences.Many people wonder whether name-brand medications are any better or even any different from their generic equivalents. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates both name-brand and generic medications, how those regulations apply to generic medications can lead to differences in how effective the medication is and in the side effects it causes, even when the generic has the same amount of the same active ingredient(s) as the name-brand version.

When you have bipolar disorder, you're encouraged to chart your moods, sleep, and energy levels daily to record patterns that may help you spot the early warning signs of a developing mood episode (mania or depression). In addition, this log provides valuable information to guide your doctor and therapist in their treatment decisions.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is not just typical childhood rebellion. All children are oppositional at times; it's part of growing up and developing independence and personality. For most kids, rebellious behaviors respond fairly well to the usual carrot-and-stick parenting techniques, but oppositional kids exhibit a much more tenacious defiance.

Pinpointing the location of bipolar disorder in your brain is almost as difficult as finding affordable health insurance. Brain imaging studies have found few consistent changes when looking at large brain structures. They've had much more success looking at changes at the cellular level and, in particular, at functional changes in cells and groups of cells in different brain areas.

When you love a person with bipolar disorder and want to support him or her, you will get a lot of suggestions from a lot of sources, some of which are more reliable than others. This article presents advice you can count on: seven ways to help a loved one with bipolar while retaining your own composure.These ideas have evolved from medical research and practice, along with personal stories and experience, and they can be powerful tools.

To manage bipolar disorder effectively, you first need to know what it is. Then you can develop and follow a treatment plan, which usually includes a combination of medication, therapy, self-help, and support from a network of understanding and committed friends and family members.This Cheat Sheet can help you get up to speed on the basics of bipolar disorder in a hurry.