Bipolar Medication – What You Need To Know

The mental illness of being Bipolar has been around for a long time. Doctors have been treating it for a long time, they have even been treating it before they knew what it was. The fact of the matter is that new medications and methodologies have been developed to help treat this mental illness.

Mistreatment of Bipolar

The first time that this illness was recognized in patients was in the second century A.D. Bipolar people have been mistreated throughout the 1960's because there was little known on how to help treat them. Many times they would even be locked away or left to fend for themselves.

Later on in the 1970's, manic-depression started to become a more accepted diagnosis in people in the medical industry. This is when treatment for bipolar disorder really began to take off.

During this time period a series of laws were enacted so that standards of living for people that had this disorder were improved.Many people think that using bipolar medication is the most important thing for anyone that is bipolar. It is true that medication can be a great tool to help manage this illness. There are tons of different medications out there that are available to treat this disorder. It is important that a doctor figures out which type of treatment will work best for you.

Bipolar Medication – Breakthrough

The first major breakthrough in medication for bipolar treatment was lithium carbonate. This type of medication belongs to a larger family of medications that are called “mood stabilizers.” These medications help to ease manic episodes. They can also help to prevent depression as well as suicide.

Bipolar Medication – Treatment Phase

What’s the best way to treat bipolar disorder? One method includes using mood stabilizers, which until now were only used as anticonvulsants. It has been recently realized that anticonvulsants have the effect of a positive impact on mood. Some anticonvulsant medications like lamtrigine, gavapentin, and topiramate have been tested for this type of use but there is no firm proof yet that these are effective for treating bipolar disorder.

How should antidepressant therapy be used for bipolar treat? With great caution. A mood stabilizer should generally be tested first because antidepressants have been known to cause episodes that are manic or rapid cycling. Should a decision be made that an antidepressant is required, some of these are less likely to cause these problems. An example is pupropion.

Psychotic Treatment

Psychotic treatment approaches are quickly evolving. The first approach was to use anti-psychotics but there was characterized by putting the mind in a mental straight jacket because they stopped people from thinking. With these there were extensive side effects, one being known as  tardive dyskinesia which can cause permanent nerve damage. Researchers were trying to find alternatives that would cause less damage.

Other anti-psychotic drugs were tried to treat the bipolar condition. In addition cognitive therapy was tried to help a person identify damaging thinking and behavior and result in them acting in a more positive manner regarding their disease.

Another approach was talk therapy in which a person would deal with the devastating consequences of the illness and its related history. There has been some success with this.

All of these approaches together are part of a process throughout the person’s life. Both medication and talk therapy can be used to effectively treat a bipolar condition. It is unclear at this point what additional treatment approaches scientists will discover for the bipolar condition.