When I was growing up, I earned a reputation for having a hot head. My dad used to look at me and say I was so angry he could fry an egg on the top of my head. So when bipolar disorder decided to set up shop in my home, we had a formula for disaster – my wife’s mania made her wicked, and my first instinct was to fight back. The result was the equivalent of a tropical storm quickly transforming into a Category 5 hurricane with plenty of energy to keep it raging for weeks on end.

A number of people have written about their experiences with lithium orotate as an alternative to pharmaceutical lithium (lithium carbonate or lithium citrate). I wanted to know more about it, so I reviewed the research. The bottom line is that we know very little about lithium orotate – the data is scant and old and tells us very little about the safety or effectiveness of lithium orotate as a substitute for lithium carbonate, the standard formulation.

The bipolar diagnosis is on the rise. You can read it in the media and readily observe it by talking to people you know. More people than ever (and significantly more children than ever) carry the label. According to results of a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry (September, 2007) entitled, “National Trends in the Outpatient Diagnosis and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder in Youth,” we’ve seen a 40-fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents between 1994 and 2003. During this same period, the bipolar diagnosis in the adult population nearly doubled.

Syndicated from the Bipolar Blog

In Part I of this series, I highlighted the challenge of returning to work with bipolar disorder and provided some practical advice on how to smooth the transition back to work after experiencing a major mood episode. In this second part of the series, I provide some more in-depth information and recommendations on obtaining additional assistance with your back-to-work efforts:

Syndicated from the Bipolar Blog

Many people with bipolar disorder are able to successfully return to work once they’re on an effective treatment regimen, which typically includes one or more medications. In Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, however, we recommend that you avoid stressors and mood triggers – and returning to work, especially a demanding job, can be loaded with stressors and triggers. In this post, we offer some suggestions on how to ease the transition back to work.

With this post, we continue our biweekly series on medications used to treat bipolar disorder and related symptoms. This week, we focus the spotlight on Trileptal (oxcarbazepine) – an anti-seizure medication that has been increasingly used to treat bipolar disorder. Following are some facts about Trileptal:

Mood stabilizers are usually effective in treating acute mania. Treating bipolar depression, however, is often more challenging for two reasons:

A study published in this month’s General Archives of Psychiatry entitled “Advancing Paternal Age and Bipolar Disorder,” reports that children of older fathers have a higher risk of developing bipolar disorder than children of younger fathers. This is a large study, and the data are quite strong. Fathers age 40 and older show some increased risk of having a child with bipolar disorder, but the risk really grows with fathers ages 55 and older.

Syndicated from the Bipolar Blog with a couple minor changes

The standard approach to treating bipolar disorder calls for a combination of medication and psychotherapy – a mood stabilizer for the mania, an anti-depressant to treat the depressive side, and psychotherapy to deal with the stressors and triggers that often push the disorder through the protective barrier of medications.