Depression Symptoms Over Divorce
depression symptoms Over Divorce
Understanding Manic Depression Symptoms
Diagnosing bipolar disorder is often difficult, even for mental health professionals. The difference between manic depression and regular depression is that the affected person with manic depression experiences both mania and depression, rather than just depression alone.
Here's several other reasons why manic depression can be so difficult to diagnose:
1. Often bipolar is inconsistently expressed among patients because some people feel mostly depression and experience little mania whereas others experience predominantly manic symptoms, with much less depression.
2. Plus, when manic depression shows up early in life, the first few episodes are much more likely to be depression, rather than mania, which usually shows up later in life. Which means the patient will likely be diagnosed as having unipolar depression rather than bipolar depression.
Because a bipolar diagnosis requires a manic or hypomanic episode, many patients are initially diagnosed and treated as having major depression.
The severity of the mania determines how the disorder is classified. Usually, mania is characterized by a distinct period of an elevated mood, generally appearing to be euphoric. People commonly experience an increase in energy and a decreased need for sleep, with many often getting as little as 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night, while others can go days without sleeping
Hypomania is generally a mild to moderate level of mania, characterized by optimism, elevated speech and activity, and decreased need for sleep. While mania can interfere with the normal living of life, hypomania generally does not.
A person diagnosed with manic depression would usually have at least three of the following seven symptoms.
1. An unrealistically high sense of self esteem, along with grandiose thoughts and feelings
2. Reduced need for sleep
3. Extreme talkativeness
4. Thoughts are too fast to process
5. Easily distracted and difficulty focusing
6. Dramatic increase in social or work-oriented activities
7. Poor judgment, as manifested by uncontrollable spending sprees, increased sexual indiscretion, and misguided financial decisions.
Lithium has been the standard treatment for those who experience manic depression. Often times, lithium is combined with various antidepressants such as Paxil or Zoloft. Lithium is not tolerated in a good percentage of affected individuals.
Lithium increases brain levels of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter, and this helps relieve manic depression symptoms. Valproic acid and Lamictal are two other mood stabilizing medications used to relieve manic depression symptoms.
Antipsychotic medications are also used to help alleviate manic depression symptoms, in cases where lithium and other mood stabilizing drugs are not enough.
Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medicine, is approved by the FDA for schizophrenia, acute mixed or manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and maintenance treatment in bipolar disorder.
The problem with Zyprexa is that it can cause extremely unpleasant side effects such as severe anxiety, diabetes, excessive weight gain, and tardive dyskinesia, also called TD. TD causes uncontrollable muscle spasms that can last a lifetime, even if the patient stops taking Zyprexa. Another common side effect is a complete loss of libido.
Various other antipsychotic medicines are also used for bipolar, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel, and Geodon.
Symbyax is classified as an antidepressant, but it's actually a combination of Prozac and Zyprexa. Like all other drugs, especially those used to treat mood disorders, Symbyax comes with potentially serious side effects, such as fatigue, loss of libido, and weight gain.
5-Hydroxytryptophan (5_HTP) is an alternative to prescription antidepressants that has been shown in scientific studies to be as effective without the debilitating side effects so common with depression medications. To reduce manic depression symptoms, 5-HTP can be combined with lithium.
hair samples of manic patients contain elevated levels of the heavy metal vanadium. Upon recovery, the vanadium levels fall into the normal range.
Those with unipolar depression have normal vanadium levels in their hair samples, but elevated levels in their blood. Once their depression is in remission, their vanadium levels also return to normal.
A person's mood seems to be tied in with the amount of vanadium in their body. By reducing vanadium levels, one double blind scientific study was able to produce significant improvement in manic depression symptoms. Their secret? They found a common nutrient present in many foods alters the chemical structure of vanadate to the less harmful vanadyl.
To find out how they did it, go to this site on manic depression symptoms.
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