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5 Responses to “What is the treatment for manic depression?”

1. Aleksandr said:
   

   March 13th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   You need a medication to stabilize your mood. Go to a doctor as soon as you can or go to a crisis center right now if you’re really desperate.

   You can learn more about manic depression at http://www.depressiondodging.com

   Good luck

2. Dr james said:
   

   March 13th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   I recommend you to see —-> http://www.all-home-remedies.com
   I hope that will resolve your problem, keep using answers.yahoo.com

3. Joey Ramone said:
   

   March 13th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   It’s expensive stuff, but there is a supplement EMP that has had a lot of press coverage and evidence I will link to in a youtube video, they did documentary about it. Just proves the natural way works. Orthomolecular medicine is another way of thinking about this. (masks on madness on youtube, decent movie)

   Fish oil! 1-3g EPA 700-200mg DHA (That’s from the book Transcend by Ray Kurzweil) You want to take a lot, it’s for your brain. Lots of evidence to back that up. Eat some oily fish tool. Many people swear by it.

   Diet!
   Eliminate gluten. Just try it, it’s because of the fuel that your brain runs on, mental metabolism.
   Ketogenic diet (research still being done, but because of the brain fuel thing, makes sense, some case studies show great effects)
   Exercise. The research on exercise and mental illness is great.

   Your brain can adapt and change (neuroplasticity) and the reasons for "manic depression" are legion. Evolutionary psychology and biology is a good way to think about these illnesses.

   Give your body everything that it could possibly ask for and amazing things can happen.

   It might take a few months, there might be some ups and downs, but work with your body.

   I was offered medication and no other treatment or education. Don’t stand for it! Meds might help some but the side effects are gnarly. If you’re not already on them, work as hard as you can on healing your brain/educating yourself about the possibilities…

4. gardensallday said:
   

   March 13th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   Bipolar is primarily treated with medications, and you see a therapist for support in managing the illness and dealing with the fallout. psycheducation.org is a good website that presents your treatment options and best practice guidelines. common meds include lithium, depakote, lamictal, abilify, seroquel, tegretol, risperdal/invega (they are basically the same thing), and others. Usually depakote or lithium would be the first things tried - lamictal has lost some of its luster lately, and i guess many psychiatrists are saying it shouldn’t be a first line treatment anymore. antipsychotics like abilify, seroquel, risperdal etc. can be helpful, but usually are for crisis management, and then tapered off, since they have riskier side effect profiles than other meds. If you do need to take them long term, you need to weigh yourself regularly, get cholesterol and triglycerides and blood sugar checked (these drugs often cause diabetes, so you need to catch blood sugar problems in time to discontinue the drug so you get no permanent problems) can cause heartbeat abnormalities, so you need EKG’s, and can cause tardive dyskenesis. The risk is proportional to the dose. Those antispychotics are huge money makers for drug companies now, since most antidepressants and other psych meds are off patent, so those drugs are improperly pushed onto people with moderate to mild mental illness, and antipsychotics are too risky to use unless the mental illness is severe enough to justify it. Antidepressants, while commonly prescribed by community psychiatrists, are not recommended for bipolar disorder by bipolar experts. Many experts feel that antidepressants increase the risk of rapid cycling and switch to mania (hey, it happened to me and my brother) and may permanently make bipolar worse for some people. A LARGE study done by the national institute of mental health called the STEP-II study found that adding an antidepressant to a mood stabilizer such as depakote or lithium offered NO benefit, so they concluded, why take the risk of destabilizing someone? ECT is an option as well, but meds are needed to hold the benefit of the ECT. Or you can get maintenance ECT, like once a month, get one treatment, but you can’t do that indefinitely - some people think there is some serious risk in that ( I don’t remember what the number was, like 50 treatments or more isn’t recommended). I had ECT and it didn’t work, but I would still say people shouldn’t rule it out, if nothing else works. I did lose about a year’s worth of memories from it, though. it upsets me, but the bipolar itself interferes with memory very much also, so I guess I am used to it. It isn’t common to have that much memory loss from that procedure, but does happen.

   The meds work very well for some people, and for those people, they may have virtually no symptoms at all, and never relapse again, or maybe only a couple times in their life. For others, the meds help, but they still have a lot of relapses, and still have lingering symptoms. For some others, the meds help very little, and the bipolar can be disabling.

   You should be seeing a psychiatrist, not a family doc, for bipolar disorder.

   hope something here helped.

   PS some folks here on yahoo answers will say they cured their bipolar with diet and exercise - diet and exercise help, abosolutely, but won’t cure it or fix severe symptoms. You have to realize that most people with bipolar have only a few episodes in their life. They credit the diet and exercise with the remission, but in truth, they will relapse eventually. With no treatment, many people go YEARS between relapses. Other people, like me, are chronically ill with it. Plus, many people diagnosed bipolar are MIS diagnosed -maybe they had abuse issues at home or something, dealt with it, then got on with their lives, and because they didn’t have mental illness, the stress symptoms went away. and they think they fixed bipolar, but they never had it to begin with.

5. Justme said:
   

   March 13th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

   There are different medications. First Manic Depression & Bi-polar disorder is basically the same thing. You first get Clinical Depression that turns in to bi-polar disorder/manic depression. Depending on how long you’ve had this illness & if you’ve taken medication for Clinical depression will have a lot to do with the dosage the Doctor gives you. Don’t panic & get yourself up-set the medication helps, it actually makes you feel like your fine & don’t need to take it. (you do) When you take what-ever prescription your given, take it exactly as directed. If at any time you feel suicidal stop taking it & call the Doctor immediately. He can change your medication or in some cases give you less–but know you do have to continue this for life. You aren’t crazy, you have a chemical imbalance that effects your nerves & mental state. Millions of people have this condition.
   When my husband died of cancer in 1986 I started with clinical depression & anxiety disorder. Now I’m 62, I’ve got chronic anxiety disorder (harder panic attacks) but I don’t get them like I use to, I’ve learned not to stress out over life~~all things pass, I have still got clinical depression, at one time they thought I had gone into manic depression but I hadn’t. I have diabetes & I got the flu, with all of these things going on my blood sugar was so low that my hands were shaking so my doctor was afraid my nerves were worse. Luckily I take my medication as directed.
   Now the medicine that I take & the medicine the doctor may prescribe for you can be different. Never take anything anyone gives you, only what your prescribed. If you mix something or take an anti-depression medicine that doesn’t go with some pill some one says will be ok because they take them, you could have a seizure, or worse. You are safe & better as long as you do as your Doctor says. Read the side effects, some go away in a week, some you report & have medicine changed. I was lucky, I have had my anxiety medicine increased in dosage, but it’s been over 20 years, My depression medication has only increased slightly.
   Now I know what panic disorder is, mine is horrible when I do have an attack (it can not kill you) I’ve felt many times like I was having a heart attack (Don’t drink alcohol) it worsens it & with medication you can really be in trouble. The attack will pass, if you have some Excedrin PM take a couple & try to sleep. Go to your Doctor as soon as you can get an appointment. If you don’t have insurance look up the County Health Nurse or County Health Dept. & go talk to them, they will connect you with the right people to help you. In an emergency call 911 & tell them what is wrong, they have to take you some where for help also…You are in my prayers…God Bless

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