Dear Reader,
While all of us need them, for patients with bipolar disorder, support networks can be an essential part of the maintenance of this illness. People with bipolar disorder, when either in manic or depressed states, can often lose touch with reality and lack insight into how they are functioning. An aware and reactive support network can be essential during these times.
Who’s in a support network?
Support networks can be as big or as small as one chooses. Often they can include parents, siblings, close friends and even co-workers. Whomever is in your support network, these are people that you feel comfortable sharing the various facets of your illness with. These are people that often have known you for years and can offer acceptance and support if you become ill. Often patients will tell me who the key people in their support networks are. They will also give these people permission to notify me, as their doctor, if they notice any of the more dangerous symptoms of bipolar disorder appearing, such as risky or dangerous impulsive behavior or intense thoughts of self harm in the patient. Oftentimes, when these symptoms start to appear, the person living with bipolar disorder may not be as attune to them as a friend or family member who is able to see symptoms from a more objective perspective.
How to build a support network?
It’s important for people who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder to engage the family members and friends whom they trust from the beginning of a diagnosis. These are the people who love and care about you. These should be people who are there for you in both your joyous moments, and times of illness or despair.
In what ways can people in support networks be helpful?
When a person with bipolar disorder becomes sick, it sometimes may be difficult to listen to advice from multiple new sources. Sometimes these new sources may be doctors, whom the person suffering may or may not know very well. Friends and family in your support network can often act as a liaison between you and your doctors. The people who know you well are often the first to notice when your mood is not as it normally is and are often able to share these thoughts with you. When this information is coming from trusted sources, it is often easier to understand and interpret at a time where in may be difficult to process what is happening to you. Often the people in your support network can help you make the initial steps to contact your healthcare provider when symptoms arise, and this may allow you to treat symptoms before they escalate and in some cases may require more intensive treatments. Anything that can be done to lessen the amount of manic or depressive episodes, will be of benefit to the person suffering from bipolar disorder in the years after a diagnosis is made.
I have a 51 year old niece who was diagnosed as bipolar about 16 years ago. When healthy, she is a loving, caring, and smart woman. She has been hospitalized at least 15 times for the illness.She went thru years of denial where she stopped taking medication, etc. She now acknowledges the disease, but refuses to listen to family memebers or seek help when a family member or friend notifies her that she is exhibiting some early signs of either a manic or depressive episode.
ReplyDeleteShe was recently hospitalized for 2 1/2 weeks (some of it mandatory, some of it voluntary), but was released with absolutley no change in the behavior that got her there - trouble sleeping, erratic speech, some delusions, lots of driving, continual phone calling and spending money. She angers and cries easily.
As far as family support, she lives with her adult brother who is no support at all - he exacerbates her problem. Her parents are deceased. She has friends and loving family members who try very hard to be supportive, BUT, we are not always successful, since her behavior is extremely disruptive and upsetting. She will not listen to us when in the throes of an episode causing the family to get angry with her as well. As a result, conversations do not always end well.
As you can see from this post, even after 16 years, the family feels just as helpless (and less patient) as it did in the beginning.
Any help, suggestions, or supportive words are welcome.
Thanks You
Hello and my aplogies for a delay in respodning. From what you have written, your niece is undermedicated and may need either a medication increase or radical medication change. Hospitals are under pressure to cut their length of stay and often discharge patients not when they are well, but when they are not longer dangerous.
ReplyDeleteSince your niece acknowledges the illnes, the best approach would be to speak to her outpatient psychiatrist, or to find a new one if s/he is not receptive.
Good luck to you adn your nice!
Dr.G