Bi-Polar DisorderAn in eyes presentation.

What is Bipolar Disorder? Bi-Polar Disorder is a brain disorder

that causes drastic shifts in mood, energy, and the will to participate in every day tasks.

Bipolar disorder has extreme highs and extreme lows, with the extreme lows being depressive, and extreme highs being a manic state of activity.

What Causes Bi-Polar Disorder No single cause. Genetics, bipolar disorder runs in the

history of some families. Brain Structure, some brains develop

improperly and are more vulnerable to bipolar disorder.

Environmental factors should also be considered as a cause, though not proven.

Symptoms

Bipolar disorder doesn’t have any one specific symptom, there is no catch all. What bipolar disorder does to you is so unique that it can take weeks to be diagnosed, with your mind switching from mania, irritability, and impulsive, up-beat behavior to a depressing mood with constant lethargy, every other week or so. It can be a hard to diagnose disease.

How it affects me.

I know I’m not normal for the most part, medication certainly helps but before I was medicated, everything was nearly surreal. I would feel “high” for days, on top of the world in productivity, getting my whole life accomplished before I could fall back into the depression. The darkness was all I thought about, just doing nothing was all I could do. I initially thought I was just worn out from all the work I had done, but it was not that simple.

My life – Manic Cycle

Treating every day as it was a day where I could approach a new thing and take on all of the projects is exhilarating.

When in a manic episode I felt that I could do anything, I was restless, didn’t get much sleep, and was always racing to the next project or thing I could do, there was no stopping me.

Manic Episodes got me like

My Life – Depression Cycle When the Depressive cycle comes

along nothing matters. Everything is slow, days last into

nights and nights last into mornings, nothing really matters.

Cycles become meaningless, nothing in the brain sticks except for negativity.

Making decisions is a never ending cycle of procrastinating.

Depression

Depression cont.

My Life

Bipolar Disorder can be treated, I have treated it, and my life has improved. Do not stop seeking help.

My Treatments

I am currently taking Lamotrigine and Depakote, both have been huge in my recovery.

Since starting the treatment I now do not have giant swings, and instead feel normal again.

Normal is completely subjective but at least I no longer have mood swings.

Good Bye

Thank you for reading about me.

This a project for a high school AP Psychology course. This is a fictionalized account of having a psychological ailment. For questions about this blog project or its content please email the teacher, Laura Astorian: laura.astorian@cobbk12.org