Understanding Bipolar Depression Symptoms And Its Treatment


Defined Tag: About Depression.
Bipolar depression is another name for manic-depressive illness. Manic-depressive illnesses tend to run more in families than most depressions and also to be more severe as well as recurrent. Sometimes, they can be dangerous, disruptive of home and normal life, and often lead to hospital admission.

People who have a manic-depressive illness have sustained periods of high moods and low moods that can range from mild to severe depression. When a person with this mental illness is in one of the high moods (manic), they are likely to feel elated, need less sleep or food than usual and experience a general feeling of well-being.

In addition, sufferers of bipolar depression may also experience hallucination and delusions. This usually leads to a state of poor judgement when some sufferers start to believe they are members of the Royal Family or VIPs when they are not. When they are in this high mood of bipolar depression, they may indulge in extravagant spending, deluded into thinking they can afford it. As a result, there are many cases where these people landed themselves with huge financial debts.

Typically, the age of onset of bipolar depression is early, often in the middle twenties as opposed to the average age of onset for all depression which is in the middle thirties, and therefore the potential for suffering and adverse effects on the sufferers’ life are magnified.

In order to treat bipolar depression, doctors are likely to recommend antidepressant drugs such as imipramine, dothiepin or lofepramine. They are usually prescribed in courses of four to six weeks during the treatment process. One major benefit is that these drugs do not have serious side effects and are only likely to present patients with irritating or nuisance effects. In addition, they are also helpful in preventing the recurrence of bipolar depression in the long term.