1. Educate yourself about your friend or family members illness, the symptoms and treatments. Read all you can about it, from reliable sources.
2.Give said family members or friends, your unconditional love and support. Offer reassurance for the future, but mostly hope.
3.Do not try to fix your friend or family members problems on your own, you will frustrate yourself. Instead encourage him or her to get professional help.
4.Always keep in mind, that a mood disorder affects a person’s attitudes and beliefs. If the person in question says things like, “nothing good will ever happen to me”, “no one loves or cares about me”, “I have learned all there is to know of all the secrets in this

world”, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that it is their illness speaking for them. With treatment your friend or family member will realize that what they had been thinking is not a reflection of reality.
5.You should have realistic expectations of and for your loved ones. He or she can recover fully,though it will not happen over night. Be patient and have a hopeful attitude.
6.Keep in mind this is a real illness, also that this is a treatable condition. This is a real physical illness that affects the brain. It is as real as is Diabetes or asthma. This is not a character flaw or personal weakness. It is not caused by anything you or anyone else did. It is a genetic disorder.Though it may not show up till many years later.
7.Do Not demand that your friend or family member “snap out of it”.
They cannot snap out of it anymore than, say a person with cancer, liver disease,or high blood pressure without treatment.
8.Most importantly take good care of yourself. Keep in mind that there are many support groups out there.Understanding family and or friends can and usually will help you through this.

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Am I Bipolar? - this is one perplexing question a person, constantly experiencing dramatic mood swings in each and every single day of his life, would like to answer. In a year, one percent of Americans with ages 18 and above suffer a manic-depressive illness called Bipolar Disorder. How does one really know if he or she suffers from Bipolar disorder?

Bipolar disorder, which is formerly called manic-depression, is a diagnosed psychiatric disorder that causes abnormal shifts in a person’s everyday mood, liveliness, and capability to perform. The person experiencing such illness may feel very much ecstatic, then extremely bad-tempered an hour after and then back again to feeling overly ecstatic with a short span of normal mood

in between both contrary tempers. Am I Bipolar if get mood swings? The answer is no. Since a condition such as Bipolar Disorder is seemingly different from a person experiencing the usual mood swings because in Bipolar Disorder, the symptoms are evidently severe. If such brain disorder is left untreated, it may lead to effects such as dreadful behaviors, inadequate performance in one s job/studies or worst; it may even lead to suicide.

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Agoraphobia and alcohol occasionally go hand in hand. This is understandable but unfortunate, as agoraphobia can be treated effectively with no need for alcohol abuse.

People who don’t drink may not necessarily start abusing alcohol, although it could happen. Those who already do drink, may drink more, since they probably think it helps.

The problem is, it probably does help, which is why they feel compelled to use alcohol, but it’s the wrong way of dealing with agoraphobia. Try never to get into this habit.

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The seriousness of bipolar cases is indisputable. In fact, many patients who have symptoms of a manic-depression state can be misdiagnosed. Another important fact is that a bipolar test can actually take years before a person is correctly diagnosed. Simply put, this mental illness is very difficult to detect.

When a person with manic-depression disorder is high or manic, it is not surprising that he won’t feel the need for a test. Therefore, only the depressive tendencies are diagnosed most often. The result is an inaccurate diagnosis of the patient, concluding the symptoms as depression only when it is actually a bipolar issue.

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The importance of an accurate bipolar disorder diagnosis cannot be overstated. If the patient is to be prescribed the right treatment, getting the diagnosis right is vital. For doctors, diagnosing bipolar disorder has always been tricky. If there was a laboratory test or x-ray that could give a definitive bipolar disorder diagnosis, preliminary investigations would provide a much clearer result. This lack of quantifiable analysis is part of the reason for the difficulty in determining whether the symptoms are an indication of mental illness or not.

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