The Bipolar Spectrum: Unraveling the Mystery, Signs, & Symptoms

is the hypomania or mania sometimes if someone feels anxious or revved up they may question if they're manic but mania really is um it probably is best to think of it more as i i call it oh sorry i got a feedback there you know what let me take off my earpods okay whatever is easiest yeah uh there maybe that's better you sound great okay great now you sound great too i was hearing myself talk back to myself okay so where did i leave off um i call mania oh now we lost you it might have picked up your headphones again i don't know if if you put them in the case they might disconnect or something i don't know let's see the joys of zoom luckily in today's world everybody understands um these tech difficulties uh this video is going to be uh recorded edited and made available in the med circle library at watch.medcircle.com um let's see if we have sound now dr marks you have me back now oh yeah sound great okay great yeah before uh the pandemic this would be very looked down upon but now everybody yeah all right so with mania you have these discreet episodes where you have you're really tuned up as i guess we call it hyper arousal but arousal sounds like you know what does that really mean but so you have more energy um you your thoughts are usually ju are moving faster you have a decreased need for sleep so it's not as though you just have trouble sleeping because you're worried about something that's coming up tomorrow like you might experience with anxiety but with mania you have a decreased need for sleep so you may be up doing stuff and then you just happen to look at the clock and it's three a.m i gotta get up at six so i better go to bed um sometimes you can be moving so fast that um you can start to lose touch with reality so sometimes people will become delusional and start thinking things that aren't real or having these big ideas that like they're gonna save the world and they have the special power to do that and et cetera et cetera so those episodes can be very destructive people can end up because you lose your judgment as well so people can like clean out their bank account or make decisions that are very um that have a lot of consequences after the fact one of the differences between hypomania and mania um well sometimes it's not always easy to tell the difference between hypomania and mania and there's kind of a gray area in between but generally with hypomania it's not as intense and it doesn't last um as long so or excuse me it may last a little bit longer but at a lower intensity so um if you become psychotic or delusional um and another way that that could look is someone might feel like they're getting special messages from the television to start this business um that is definitely mania but short of that it's really about a degree of dysfunction that it's causing you um we are getting uh loaded here with questions from our viewers uh watching on zoom so i want to get right into those but to answer a reoccurring question yes this video will be uploaded and made available to you at watch.net watch.netcircle.com let's go to our first question this med circle member is asking can complex post-traumatic stress disorder be misdiagnosed as bipolar one good question um it shouldn't be misdiagnosed as bipolar one because with complex ptsd that is more of a disturbance in um that has more of an effect on your personality the way you respond to life to people the kinds of relationships that you have um because it's because of the series of traumas that you experience starting at an early age um it affects your development and so um you may be more sensitive um to [Music] comments that people make or you and you can also have an uh an overlying depression on top of the pts the complex ptsd but the complex ptsd affects more your the way you interact with people and how you feel about yourself as i mentioned with mania you've got this really it has a certain look to it with the way that it's the way you're behaving and it's short-lived whereas complex ptsd is more something that's that runs in the background and will be present whether you're in a depressive episode or a manic episode or not excellent really really clear and well said thank you for that uh our next question is from a med circle member asking how can one distinguish between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder and a big question can you have both so yes you can have both it's not always that easy to distinguish between the two because of the fact that there are a lot of overlapping symptoms so someone with borderline personality disorder can have a typical characteristic of it is mood instability so you can have ups you can have downs you can you can feel very low and usually these ups and downs though are shorter lived meaning they can fluctuate over the course of the day whereas with bipolar disorder you have these episodes that last longer than just a few hours over the course of the day so a depression is not even really considered depression unless you have it for at least two weeks and with hypomania and mania it's four days to a week of symptoms so that's one of the main determining factors in telling the difference between moon um we call it lability of being very um reactive so mood reactivity that changes and fluctuates throughout the day versus these episodes of a depressed state versus a manic or hypomanic state and then with borderline personnel and so yes you can have both and it's often in a term that's sometimes used for that is border polar when someone has a combination it's a made-up term so it's not an official term but um some people will use that term and it does make it harder to treat both disorders and what it means though is that you have to pay you have to treat both separately so with bipolar disorder being very um in touch and in tune with your medication management and then with borderline personality disorder the main treatment for that is dialectical behavior therapy but there are some other therapies for it um but also at the same time getting treatment for that because the medications for bipolar disorder are not going to address how you respond to life whether you feel empty and how you feel about yourself and those sort of things really well said i had never heard of border what did you call it again border disorder polar odor border polar border border it's hard to say border polar water polar yeah um sammy grimm is a patient um with lived experience for for uh borderline personality disorder she was misdiagnosed twice with bipolar disorder put on meds for years it was uh really difficult for her we have a great series on that on youtube it's available for free i know we have a lot of med circle members here thank you for being here if you're brand new i'm kyle kittleson i'm the host at med circle and we offer video series and live interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists just like dr tracy marks and if you have not heard of us or want to try us out i invite you to try us out for free for a week give us a shot you can start your free trial at watch.medcircle.com or medcircle.com and if you use the code i got this 25 i think bridget will put it in the chat you can get 25 off your first month uh we are a mental health education platform and uh we are so thrilled that you're here today dr marx let's go to our next question um this question is from med circle member asking can medication stop a manic episode coming on or do you gotta write it out oh medication can definitely stop uh manic episode coming on in fact the best thing you can do is keep up with your early signs we'll sometimes refer to them as a prodrome of signs that after a while when you start to get a pattern to your illness starting to see things that you start doing or start happening before you really either go into mania or depression so a classic or a common thing with that might be decreased need for sleep so you notice that you usually get six or seven hours now you're starting only sleep three or four that might be the beginning of a manic episode coming that would be the time to contact your doctor about either being having something added or having something increased some of the medicines that tend to be very good at putting water on the fire as i call it are things like zyprexa or or oh lanzapine is the generic name for that quetiapine is another one also called seroquel both of them are very sedating so they're very good at just kind of quickly nipping things in the bud as a reminder med circle is not a treatment or therapy provider or referral service med circle live sessions in this class is for educational purposes only our next question is asking is bipolar type 1 solely genetic or caused by environmental factors or is it a mixture of both very good questions so we believe that bipolar disorder as as that as we use that term is is solely genetic however um and and i hesitate when i say that because not everyone has a genetic link that's recognizable so people can develop bipolar disorder and never have had anyone in their family have it um but you can there are things that can cause mania or depression symptoms like steroid use if you got prescribed steroids for some inflammatory problem that you have um or a head injury or things and in that case we don't call it bipolar disorder it's called a mood disorder due to whatever the the medical condition that you have so medical conditions hyperthyroidism if you have an overactive thyroid that can produce symptoms that look like mania because it can rev you up um we would call that um a mood disorder due to hyperthyroidism for example you know what i like about you dr marx is you you just talk to me like we're friends like we're on the same level you know like you just tell me not as a a doctor like speaking you know to me in complicated terms i feel like you're just my friend who's really educated on this it's very good well good i'm glad i guess i i'm just so used to talking to patients all the time i mean i'm still in practice so yeah always in the habit of kind of trying to explain things to people so i'm glad you feel that way deep topic uh let's go to our next question this person says i have atypical bipolar disorder and because i don't fit in the traditional criterias doctors disregard my symptoms or attribute them to other things how is it looking for the education of psychiatrists around the world and knowing and diagnosing bipolar spectrum disorders that are not simply bipolar 1 and bipolar 2. dr marx yeah so that's kind of a new trend as far as looking at bipolar disorder as more of a bipolar spectrum disorder so currently now it is still bipolar disorder unipolar unipolar depression but there's still a segment of people who believe that we should not have changed the name back in 1980 when it went from manic depressive illness to bipolar disorder and what and some of the things that make us us i guess i'm in that faction of people who believe that but make us think that i believe that um we're not it's not a good description bipolar disorder i'm more for the spectrum illness okay good to know all right because of things like um anxious depression um depression with well it's called depression with anxious distress can look very much like a mixed bipolar um episode where you have a mixture of depression and mania at the same time um there's just kind of this this middle group of people who it's not that they just have this um mixture of symptoms for lack of a better word that look like it's they still behave at some point with having mania at some point or hypomania but then this other thing that's not quite pure depression it's somewhere in the middle what does that end up all meaning in the end the main thing it affects is the treatment as far as the medication that's used because we in general antidepressants are not recommended for bipolar disorder it is one of the things that can make people slip into a mixed episode can also make you um switch back and forth and rapid cycle so in general it's considered disruptive and not recommended but there are some cases where people won't respond well enough to multiple mood stabilizers for their depression and just have to have an antidepressant even if it's just for a short period of time so that's kind of where it makes the difference as to what are we actually treating here are we treating a pure depression that will never have any mania or hypomanic qualities to it or are we treating what is currently depression but it's going to become something else later and as far as education i think that we're um i mean i'm a long way from my residency but you know where there's lots more research and um current education on looking at bipolar disorder differently there's lots of emerging um research on bipolar disorder there's a lot we don't understand about it yeah um we have a poll up for our members watching us live on zoom if you don't mind answering that poll it helps us create new content i'm seeking bipolar disorder education for and then you just click the one that you're seeking for doctor marks you can just you know pick one okay i was about to put on the glasses so i could see okay for myself okay uh so we'll share those results in just a little bit our next question goes uh is from med circle member asking is being on the bipolar spectrum always a lifelong condition you have to manage with medication or can it be overcome like some people with unipolar depression um i it is not something that can be cured in the sense i know that you didn't say cured but that's what i'm that i mean by overcome but cure it in the sense that it goes away and you never have it again but it doesn't have to necessarily be managed by medication for your entire life all of your life so um there are things that can really help with bipolar disorder and help prevent people from having episodes or at least lessen the severity of them and some of those things are what's called social rhythm therapy where you are having a structured routine and schedule and some of the things and that really does make a big difference it seems really basic but it really makes a big difference to stay on a set schedule therapy yeah it's called social rhythm therapy and so what it does is there's a social rhythm metric srm five it's called where you keep these the kind of five things the same um the time that you get out of bed not pop your eyes open awake but you actually get out of bed the time you have your first contact with someone which may not always be controllable especially if you don't if you live alone the first time that you start either work school or some activity the time you have dinner and then the time you go to bed if you can kind of keep those times within a reasonable amount of if you can keep those the same time within reason doesn't have to be exact time um it's been shown to really improve outcomes with bipolar disorder outcomes being less episodes more time in between episodes so that said if you're someone who may have one episode either depression or mania once a year well potentially um you could go a cert a chunk of time with no medications um and but still in treatment with your doctor looking for another episode coming so you can jump on it um so in theory there could be times where you don't take any medication i have patients who i've been following for 20 years and they've had times where you know earlier on they may have had um episode back to back to back to back couple hospitalizations and then things just kind of get quiet and drop off now it could be because they stayed on medication or it could be because the illness itself is not as active kind of like a volcano going into you know hibernation so um i think that if you really i do think there are things that you can do health-wise like the social rhythm therapy but also um in terms of a healthy diet and eating clean eliminating preservatives i saw an article talking about the cured meats triggering mania so also nutritional psychiatry is an area that's kind of evolving as well of just how much food impacts your illness so i do think there are other things that you could do to help keep off or keep back the illness incredible and really fascinating we have the results of that poll 47 percent of you said you're seeking uh bipolar disorder education for yourself uh right after that um for your job we have a lot of uh professionals and students in here really fascinating um thank you for that uh information i was gonna say something oh uh let's share uh dr marx's youtube channel that's what i was gonna say um so in the uh chat right now uh bridgette will be sharing uh the link to dr tracy marx's youtube channel that's how i first discovered her phenomenal resource great videos both you know how sometimes you watch mental health videos and you're like oh god this is so boring but i got i need the information you don't have to worry about that she's very pleasant very accommodating and it's great information so make sure you go subscribe and turn on those notifications for her youtube channel let's go to our next question is it normal to experience ongoing fatigue with bipolar 1 even when not experiencing depression wow ongoing fatigue um hmm so my thought about that would be i'd have a lot of follow-up questions but so some scenarios where you could have fatigue is you know my first thought would be is it medication related um so you know most times people remain on medication in between episodes so is it a side effect of your medication um that would be my first thought also it's not it's fairly common to have co-occurring abnormalities in your thyroid functioning even if it's not to the point where it's considered hyperthyroid or hypothyroid but people with bipolar disorder tend to be more sensitive to even small changes in thyroid functioning so even if your thyroid is technically normal because it's in the range but if it's at the low end of the range it can you can it can still bring you down and make you feel similar to being depressed and similarly if it's too high so sometimes your doctor may want to supplement you with thyroid medication even if it's technically normal but if it's at the low end of normal that way um outside of that i would look at things like diet influencing your overall energy level um but yeah my first thought would be a medication side effect if that's applicable what's the youngest person you've diagnosed with any type of bipolar well i don't treat children so i only treat adults so but as far as me having experience knowing someone who's been treated or diagnosed i'd say maybe like 11 12 years old but we think of childhood bipolar disorders going down as low as 8 10 and some people even kind of question eight so it can start pretty early understood our next question is from a med circ med circle member asking can anxious depression be misdiagnosed or um okay can anxious depression or having depression with a lot of nervous energy be misdiagnosed as bipolar 2. yes it can be misdiagnosed as bipolar 2 as far as the increased energy or the the um you know especially if your anxiety manifests with a lot of physical nervousness or physical anxiety symptoms like heart racing trouble feeling like maybe you're coming out of your skin versus worrying type of anxiety so worrying type of anxiety is different from mania so with the mania or hypomania and this hypomania for bipolar 2 again we're talking about it being a physical revving up that has other consequences like making you think fast making you not sleep impairing your judgment etc so um so yes i do think people who have an anxious depression um especially with all of the online education and information about bipolar disorder um i think there are lots of people who just maybe as a knee-jerk believe anything that looks odd or you know hyped up must be hypomania and it's not always hypomania um we uh at the at the end of this uh session i don't want to use uh dr marx's time of course but at the end of this anyone who would like to stay on and get a tour of med circle what we offer i will be doing that you don't have to stay on but if you're interested in that we will be doing that at the end of this session uh our next question is asking do you have any advice regarding brain fog i need this dr marks and cognitive deficits found in bipolar disorder so this is a tough one because there's lots of contributing factors to this so some of it is um again going back to medication effect uh which is tough because if you if the medication is keeping you stable um what do you do about it if it's making you also think slower um so so the first answer is is there you know is taking a look at the medications that you're on if you are in a period of maintenance trying to come off as many as possible typically the antipsychotics that we use to treat bipolar disorder um have a lot of these side effects as well but limital can also cause the brain fog um there's a push now toward de-prescribing we call it a kind of getting people down to the bare bones that they can take um just to minimize side effects okay so that's that's one answer to that question um you know sleep deprivation or poor sleep habits can also affect your thought processing um and it can affect it a lot and it's not i mean it's very typical for someone with bipolar disorder to have a very poor sleep schedule kind of goes back to the social rhythm therapy thing of getting structure and routine in your life so that you have a regular your body clock kind of functions the way that it's supposed to um exercise definitely improves alertness and mood as well as your thinking and your your ability to problem solve and all of that um those would be the things that i'd come up with off the top of my head i would say though um two things that are that to think about medication wise i would avoid trying to take stimulants for that reason um because and that that's kind of a common thing that will come up while i'm having trouble focusing you know what about adderall well um stimulants can definitely cause people with bipolar disorder to rapid cycle have mixed symptoms and become unstable but some people have to take them because they already had adhd so you know but nonetheless that's one thing and then the last thing on this question is um benzodiazepines are used a lot for not only anxiety but sometimes people will just end up kind of stuck on them to help them sleep and even if it does help you sleep which helps your thinking there it does have the net effect of slowing your uh your thinking as far as your problem solving and things and making you um slows your reaction time and things like that so those are just a few things to think about that way understood this is a little longer question you've touched on a little bit of this but in case there's anything else uh can someone with bipolar disorder be off medication completely when the symptoms are pretty much under control they continue by saying my dad is currently on seroquel and lithium his doctor is working on reducing the dosage as these meds have side effects i just want to know if he could be off mets completely since he seems normal now i would say it's risky to get off the medicine completely um that that would be something that you know i've entertained that possibility with some patients where it's been a few years since they had an episode and so we kind of go down down down down down and just kind of see what happens so it would be something you would do that he would have to do with this doctor very carefully kind of going back to what i was saying about the deep prescribing another option rather than to get off of everything is to get on the bare minimum just something just one medication for maintenance some of the medications that are fda approved for mania or depression are not necessarily as good for the maintenance phase so there are different the medications work differently for different phases um some better than others but it is risky to completely get off because bipolar disorder um mostly comes back don't know when it could come back it could he could have an inter-episode period of years um but so it would be something to really carefully watch symptoms of an emerging episode understood our next question asked my young adult son recently suffered his first manic episode sorry to hear that which was very severe 55 days impatient as a parent what is the most important thing i need to know about how to support my son good question yeah your mother or father who or caregiver awesome dr marx yes that's the that's a great question the best question is how how do you support your child um for them to have the best outcome and so one of the things is kind of is what you're doing now get loaded up with education understanding as much of the illness as you can recognizing that it is an illness that requires medication um i know we've kind of touched on that and gone back and forth a little bit in this live stream but now is not the time at the beginning of the illness to like look at how can he get off right now it's about getting stable and staying stable and you know addressing how long he needs to be on medication much later but right now it's about getting stable and so some of the things that you can do um to help things better and be better in the future is over time um understanding what are the typical depression symptoms he has what are the typical manic symptoms he has what are some triggers so that you can help reduce triggers what are things and so you're not going to know all that today you're not going to know it all in a month but that's the kind of thing that you kind of watch over time take note of so that ideally in some amount of time it might be a year or two you and your son can get get to the point where you can say when i become depressed i experience this this and this when i become manic i experience this this and this this makes it worse this makes it better and just kind of know and as i say you're not going to know that right now but paying attention and writing things down helps kind of be able to anticipate things and know how to respond better to when things change and uh i know i'm not the doctor no one's gonna get my opinion but take care of yourself too parents really go all in on their children and then they they wake up five years later and realize oh my gosh in five years i haven't thought about myself one time and that's not a life you have your care is important and when you are healthy and well and present and mindful you actually are a better supporter for those in your life so uh take care of yourself and get a support system around you if you don't already have that that's my little person no that's that's 50 cents that's great yeah yeah there you go uh for females can ovulation increase chances of hypomania and administration with depression i'm not so sure about ovulation affecting it having a direct effect on triggering a manic episode certainly uh with premenstrual dysphoric disorder that some women can have where in um prior to menses they have an uptick in mood instability whether it be depression and irritability but it can also be very um you could become very labile angry irritable and then it classically just drops off maybe a day or two after your period starts and then outside of that you're fine so some people can have that on top of having bipolar disorder such that you um during the time of your period you you just you just become more emotionally unstable and that emotional instability can take the form of worsening um hypomania if that's a state that you were kind of already in or worsening depression got it med circle member asks what do you recommend for my partner on things to help me when i'm manic or depressed bipolar one he hasn't seen me in an episode yet ah okay wait let me hear that question again how do i help my partner yeah so what do you recommend for this person's partner on things the partner can do to help this person when this person is manic or depressed they indicate they have bipolar one uh their partner has not seen them in an episode yet okay so um i would say the best thing for your partner also is similar to what i was saying about the mom and the sun is is for your partner to be able to understand what the illness is to begin with a lot of people just don't really understand bipolar disorder um and understand what it looks like for you to when you're depressed and what it looks like when you're manic and then you need to help your partner help you or support you so for example when you get depressed if you're someone who just spends the whole day in the bed and can't get out of the bed do you want your partner to help you get out of the bed or because they're probably gonna naturally try and help you but if that just is gonna irritate you or make things worse you need to let your partner know that so being able to um when you're not in that state talk about okay when i'm here this is what i need so that they can know all right now i know what i need to do excellent really really excellent i i've had to do that with with my ex i go don't try to help this bring me a cup of tea get out of my room please our next question here uh i recently diagnosed i was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder rapid cycling and every night i heard voice and i i heard voices and i suddenly woke up getting headaches like something was hitting my head i need to know how to control my mind or pause my mind to think and rethink about right or wrong they also continue to say that they've been having trouble sleeping they might even go three days without sleeping yeah so it sounds like you have gotten to the point where you're starting to get psychotic which can happen with mania it can also happen in a depressed phase too by the way but certainly um sleep deprivation going without sleep is like lighter fluid on mania it just it just ramps it up so i wouldn't be surprised that three days with no sleep you start losing touch with reality the treatment for that really is an antipsychotic medication it you know it's hard once you once you lose the ability to know what's real and what's not real you can't just talk yourself out of that because you don't have that kind of perspective um i would not expect also to if you just slept and chances are you're not gonna be able to sleep on your own if you just slept that that's gonna fix it as well now some people can if they're just kept safe and things it can just pass but it's not good for your brain to be in that state of psychosis untreated like that so really the the way to address it is by talking with your doctor about the episode and and taking care of it medication-wise as far as a headache thing i'm not sure what that's about um you can't people can experience headaches from lack of sleep um otherwise i would say you should see your primary care doctor to get a work up for that med circle member asks i have hypomania and have a hard time telling if i am in a good mood or starting a manic episode interesting what suggestions do you have dr marks that's a great question because um sometimes people with uh particularly with bipolar 2 disorder with bipolar 2 disorder you can spend more time depressed than with bipolar dis bipolar 1 disorder that's kind of one of the characteristics that distinguishes between the two as well is that with bipolar 2 disorder you tend to have more depressive episodes so when you've got somebody who's depressed a lot when they're not depressed it can just feel so good it's like how do i know that i'm just not how do i know i'm not manic or getting hypomanic now um because i feel so good right hypomania is still problematic so it's not just i'm happy it's you're so sped up again going back to the speed up thing that you're still having it it will show itself as a problem in some way you your thoughts may be moving fast you may be not everybody gets happy hypomanic some people get irritable hypomanic so maybe you're snapping at people um but let's say going back to the happy thing maybe you're coming up with with ideas that just really aren't realistic and maybe making some a lot of bad decisions but there is a problem so hypomania is still a problem even if it doesn't land you in the hospital versus just being happy and even somewhat grandiose oh i think i'm gonna i'm gonna go do this well if doing that doesn't cause problems then you know maybe you're just happy sure uh there's a great series that med circle has with kevin hines some of you may have heard of him he jumped off the um just forgot the name of it the famous bridge in san francisco golden gate golden gate thank you dr mark uh he jumped off survived and he tells his story of living with bipolar disorder suicidal ideation and overcoming that um it's an incredible story and we have an in-depth uh it's about an hour a little more than our interview with him on that um that's available on medcircle.com dr mark's mentioned the importance of mental health education a great way to get educated is to go subscribe to dr tracy marx's youtube channel she is a clinical and forensic psychiatrist she uploads new videos every wednesday at i think it's nine o'clock yes eastern time time uh very informative very calming you know when you watch her you feel good and you're learning it's a great uh way to absorb that information we'll include the links below or just go to youtube and type in dr tracy marks and subscribe let's go to our next question um i can move my mouse here can you have extreme mood swings while being on medications not full episodes but extreme mood changes yes you can have mood changes while on medications because keep in mind the medications don't necessarily work work 100 but i mean they don't they don't keep you from going up and down so i tell people that the ideal scenario when i'm treating someone is to have you um have you you know if we i'm kind of mathematical am i thinking but if you think of a sine wave that goes up and down with bipolar disorder you go up and down up and down i want it to just go a little up and down um so you medicate you to the point where you still have ups highs and lows you don't want to be flatlined so the expectation is that you are still going to have some level of emotional reactivity even on your medication now you can still have breakthrough symptoms on medication as well so really it's about is this a normal just high and low based on what's going on for the day or am i starting to bust through with some either hypomania symptoms or am i starting to sink into a depression because i have a sustained period of these negative moods that's what you would look at is it sustained and how bad is it understood um this person asked a few questions but uh i i don't i think she indicated that she's okay if we don't get to all of them so i'm gonna pick her first two here uh this person's asking are there any jobs you cannot do careers you cannot pursue sports disciplines you cannot practice if you're diagnosed with bipolar and can you become a psychologist for example if you're diagnosed with bipolar well i have colleagues with bipolar disorder uh so you know they whether or not you can do the profession really depends on the profession and their rules and whether or not they hold it against you um the field of medicine um you know it can um put certain um restrictions on making sure that you know you have to check in i mean i'm not sure what all they do but it does get nitpicky with doctors who have a mental disorder to show that they're in treatment etc and then it's not impairing their patient care as far as like practically speaking should i even pursue this this type of work or that type of work i would say that um i think that it's probably not a good idea to pursue a type of work that would that could make your disorder worse like one that requires you to be awake for 36 hours at a time or on a regular basis so perhaps like you know working as a fireman where you've got go a few days um needing to all to be awake does that mean you can't do that no it doesn't mean you can't do that but it may trigger you or it may make it harder for you to manage your illness so i wouldn't say to someone if i were talking to a patient of mine i wouldn't say to that person um you're limited and you can't do anything i don't think people should think of it that way i think you ought to pursue what you want to do but keep in mind um you're gonna if it is a kind of career that re that that requires something of you that could make your illness worse primarily like with the sleep deprivation issue um that you may have to do some extra things to protect yourself um when you're doing you know during those periods to keep yourself stable that's really kind of more the perspective more so than being eliminated from a career because of your illness yeah and you know i get a lot of emails from people who come to med circle because they were diagnosed with a mental health condition and they wanted to get educated about it then they start to realize oh i'm really interested in mental health and then some of those people go maybe i should do something in this space and they don't all become psychiatrists of course but some of them go into therapy or counseling or they volunteer or whatever but that lived experience offers a very unique insight into the space you know i've worked with i've had therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists who have no mental health problems that they've told me at least and then i've worked with them some who go yeah i was diagnosed with depression when i was 24 or whatever and that lived experience offers a a unique value proposition in my opinion as a patient next question this person asks can bipolar episodes switch more quickly and become more intense if left untreated yes they can we call that the kindling effect where untreated episodes can lead to more episodes in the future um getting space where the spaces in between the episodes are less so they can be more frequent and be harder to treat um so you start out it responds well to this one medication but then you go a couple of episodes of not getting it treated it goes away by itself but then after a while you start becoming less responsive to medications multiple medications type of thing yes this person asks can dr marx explain explain what mixed bipolar specifically bipolar 2 episodes might look like in more detail i bet she can i bet she can dr martin yes so um so mixed episodes are where you have a mixture of both depressive episodes and manic episodes at the same occurring at the same time and i forget the exact cut off it might be like two of two of depression and two manic something like that but let's let's go back to the hypomania as as the question was posed um so it could look like a person who is uh probably let's say your normal amount of sleep um is seven hours where you might only be sleeping four or five hours and yet you're um you're feeling like instead of feeling on top of the world and you want to do this and any other you start feeling very um down on yourself and low maybe even tearful um you may even feel aggravated and agitated and angry um uh maybe even have suicidal thoughts so it's it's this um it's kind of like being low but at the same time being um shaken up and and and sped up um some people have called it wired but tired so you may and and i mentioned you might be sleeping less but you might not you might be having trouble getting out of bed but yet your mind is spinning and racing and you can't like put thoughts together because you just feel like you're all over the place um and you're making poor decisions because of the poor judgment thing that you can have or just making really quick decisions because hypomania comes with impulsivity as well and they're they're quick bad sad decisions yes understood um can people with bipolar type 2 experience dissociate and if they do what is that like so people with bipolar disorder can dissociate with dissociation being kind of a break from reality not in the sense of psychosis where you don't know what's real and what's not real but it's like the a lesser degree of um change in like uh in like experiencing your real state and i'm not explaining this very well but so some examples could be what's called derealization where you don't feel like you're in your body so sometimes people will say i feel like i'm observing myself um d personal so sorry that's the personalization the realization so the personalization is kind of a break from reality with yourself the realization is like um disconnection from your environment so you um may feel like you're walking around in a dream or the colors might seem muted i've had people tell me that before or that just things just don't seem real around you it's not a symptom of bipolar disorder some people can um experience that as part of an episode of either depression or hypomania or out or not in an episode because it is its own entity so it's one of those things dissociative states or depersonalization derealization that people can have independent of bipolar disorder so you can have both it can be that being in an episode can kind of trigger that as a reaction so maybe you're more prone to have a dissociative dissociation or dissociated state and your mania or your depression kind of makes it worse or triggers it that's kind of the best way i could see kind of fitting the two together but it's not as though everyone with bipolar disorder will dissociate but some people do and and people with anxiety can also experience it as well i want to get this question in dr marks is there a big difference of getting bipolar disorder as an adult or as a child is there some learned behaviors that come with being an adult as well so kind of going back to the kindling effect that i was mentioning before of untreated episodes making things can make things worse or future episodes worse similarly the earlier that you develop the episode kind of gives you a head start on the episode developing i guess and so um people who who who who where it becomes crystal clear that they have mania and hypomania or men are depre bipolar disorder as a child means that they just they have more years to have it be a problem and over time those are oh looks like we froze a little bit or at least we did on my end am i still here now you're here okay so the 30 or 40 year old person who has been living with bipolar disorder say for 20 years can look different as far as their disorder being a little bit more severe and harder to treat than someone who their first episode was at 25 and now they're 35. um as far as learned behaviors um i think that um everyone has different coping styles and so that kind of gets complicated as to the things that influence how you react to life to stress to things that affect you negatively and how you cope with those things your degree of resilience and all those things and how you're raised and your temperament all that play into that so um i think i wouldn't say that people who develop bipolar disorder early have a certain set of coping strategies because that is a more personalized temperament based type of thing right yes understood um dr marks we truly could talk all day about this we've had hundreds of questions come in and we've got through as many as possible what have we not talked about today when it comes to bipolar disorder that you want everybody to know wow a day's worth of information that i could go through um i guess what i would want people to know is that it is it it bipolar disorder is can be a difficult illness but it also can be their treated it can you can still live a good life it doesn't have to mean that this is the end now for you um and so really the key is education and treatment um and and treatment doesn't have to mean pills so you can be in connected with a doctor and go for a period of time you know perhaps without medication but still be connected um with the doctor so that when if something starts to change for you you all can make the appropriate um decisions so the best thing to do is prevention as far as addressing things from a health perspective with diet exercise sleep sleep hygiene all of those things and taking good care of yourself so that you can have the best course and the best outcome possible and so it is you can live well still with bipolar disorder uh you absolutely can and our founder doug colbeth uh has bipolar disorder he was diagnosed later in life he's a very successful man he's married with kids he just has a new granddaughter he's he has a wonderful life and it's because he finally got educated on his bipolar disorder and finally got the treatment that works for him and it's a very inspiring story and and that's really what motivated him uh to start med circle many years ago was you know i i worked in a world where having any mental health condition was stigmatized because people didn't know about it and he wanted to change that and how we're doing that is through men's circle um dr marks thank you i know we went a little over that 11 o'clock i know you have a busy day thank you for being here where else can people find you well other than my youtube channel which is dr tracy marks i also have my website is markspsychiatry.com yeah and you have a great twitter too i was uh perusing it this morning uh so uh i you have a twitter right i do i'm not that active on it though but yeah it's there or you have an imposter yeah i gotta go look at that yeah thank you dr lars now make sure you follow her we'll include those links below if you want to hang around i'm going to give uh viewers an inside look into uh the back end of med circle also uh provide a discount code for those who are interested but otherwise dr marks thank you for being here i appreciate it thanks for having me i enjoyed it good to see you awesome okay bye-bye all right so the um thank you i've been reading the chat everybody and and thank you it's really great i'm gonna share my screen right now or as soon as bridget gives me access and um i will go ahead and show you exactly what is included in a med circle membership in case you're interested now we have lots of uh discounts as well for uh healthcare workers and students and teachers and whatever it is that you're whatever it is you could possibly be involved in we probably have a discount for it so if you think you qualify for a discount email support medcircle.com and they will get you set up on your discounted membership right here i'm showing you our video library so this is filled with in-depth video interviews from doctors patients and experts all on mental health you can see that we've categorized it by topic but sometimes people join med circle because they fell in love with a specific doctor so you might have just fallen in love with dr tracy marks and then you want to go see more videos from her you can do that by scrolling to the bottom of this page where we have our our top our videos categorized by doctors so here's dr romney for example if you click on dr romney it'll show you all of the videos uh from dr romini there's a search option as well on this page so like if you guys are interested in narcissism and you can actually spell narcissism not like me you can't spell it uh it'll pull up any videos related to that keyword so spend some time on this to explore and see if there are any videos that you like here all of the classes just like the one you watched will be loaded right up here for you to watch the replay so this one will be eventually in that library we also have these free series right here these are great to watch you don't have to log in you don't have to provide an email they're just free commercial free um and these are also great to send to people since there's they're not behind any paywall or anything like that um i wish this would there we go uh fine and then after that we have our live classes so our live classes are like the ones you just attended um however 98 of our classes are for med circle members only the reason we do that is because like today we got hundreds of questions there was no way we could go through all of them we try to keep our member only sessions more intimate smallers and they're also longer they go for typically 90 minutes so you can have more of an interaction with our speaker but here's where you can see upcoming classes another special event we've got coming oh these just got updated yay so all of these are coming and you can register for them and if you are a med circle member it's included in your membership of course and you will be guaranteed a seat and at the end of this i'll give everyone who's listening a code so they can start their trial and get a discount finally we have an app it's available in any app store for any device the app is really cool obviously because you can watch on the go but you can also download videos and save them for later so if you're traveling or in a place without internet you can still access that content it also tracks your watch history there's a lot of customization it's free to download it does come with some free series and resources but if you are if you start your membership you'll have full access to the app which is great of course you can also go to medcircle.com and offer and get all of our free resources as well we have a very robust youtube channel uh that we update each week we also have a a really great blog that i'm really proud of i work on this every week all the time i don't write the content we have a team of therapists psychologists and psychiatrists who produce this type of content um but it's it's all free it's all great and even when you come in here and um you know you click on one of these it's not just words we have lots of videos to accompany that so that you can really get an education on whatever topic it is you're searching for if you go to the sign up button or bridget will include a link in this chat um you can sign up here choose a monthly membership and click the promo code and then type in i got this 25 and it should give you a a discount on your first month you'll get a first your first week is free no obligation and then after the week your first month will be at 25 off if you're already in and you know i want the information i want the education the best deal is to do an annual option uh it's 120 bucks paid up front it's good for 12 months and you can also gift this to people over the holidays we had a lot of people gift their friends family children one or up to 12 months of access to med circle so that's an option if it's not for you perhaps it's for somebody else are there any questions about that i'm going to go to the group chat if i can stop sharing this in the um in a zoom and we'll see if there's any questions those are in us dollars correct yeah and if you do have a um if you're a healthcare worker a student a teacher a professional a member of the military we have discounts for you as well just email support medcircle.com and mandy our member advocate will get that set up for you cool are there any other questions let's see how much information is there on bipolar disorder we have um a series the discounts are only available for monthly payments i will answer all these questions uh and that's that's not on us uh it's a thing with the system we would love to be able to discount an annual membership but uh the system does not allow us to do that right now um oh no no we're girl we we got you mil it includes military spouses well our only activity everybody all of them yes just email me we'll get you set up um the discounts are only valid for monthly oh how much bipolar information so we have a series on bipolar with dr dominic's fortelli we have um some live classes on the subject as well but you can go to watch.metcircle.com and view all the information we're not trying to hide any of it from you or just try it out for a week and then if you think i don't want to do this then you can cancel and you're not out any money and there's no obligation um awesome cool yay from india yay hi uh retired nurses absolutely send us an email support medcircle.com we'd love to get you set up oh yeah we do so we have a great series on ketamine treatment for uh treatment resistant depression uh we also have a uh i actually got a ketamine treatment for a docu-series we did uh we have that video available on youtube however if you type in what's working show ketamine it should come up otherwise go to watch.medcircle.com for the the actual series on ketamine it's it's very informative um is this webinar available to re-watch it will be at watch.metcircle.com does med circle provide continuing educate education credits for mental health professionals we do not at this time do you provide internships too we do not at this time i think i'm going to sign up watching from london well we would love to have you all right good i think those are all the questions if you have more questions ask me kyle medcircle.com email support medcicle.com uh but go give us a shot for a week this mental health education is incredibly powerful you already understand that because you registered for a mental health education live event so i know that you understand that what you may not understand is how profound this education is it's not treatment it's not therapy but i was diagnosed with depression when i was nine i was in treatment and therapy and medicated since i was nine until present day but it wasn't until i was 31 that i even learned what cognitive behavioral therapy was it wasn't until i was 31 and joined med circle that i learned i am not my thoughts it's i learned the concepts of acceptance and commitment therapy and how i comply those ideas to my own life how i can better manage my negative self-talk it wasn't until i joined med circle that i actually learned how to support my friends who struggle with depression or anxiety or how to talk to somebody with a personality disorder or how to actually interact with a co-worker who might be a little manic or in a depressive state this education has far reaching implications that make your life easier that's what i have found it has made my life easier so give us a shot for seven days and see if your life can be a little easier with the right education i'm kyle kiddleson and remember whatever you're going through you got this

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 162,717

Keywords: bipolar, bipolar disorder, what is bipolar disorder, what is bipolar, bipolar depression, depression, mania, signs of bipolar disorder, manic depression, am i bipolar, bipolar disorder symptoms, manic episode, manic, mood, treatment, hypomania, symptoms, anxiety, disorder, mood swings, diagnosis, borderline personality disorder, mental health, psychiatry, mental health awareness, mental illness, psychology, dr. tracey marks, recovery, health, video, interview, live, medcircle, cyclothymia, youtube

Id: CiOhapIrgdI

Length: 67min 20sec (4040 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021

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