Anxiety Depression Symptom, Bipolar Disorders

I’m researching bipolar disorder especially on teens, can anyone please help me?

I’m researching bipolar disorder and I’m most interested on how it affects teens. How often do mood swings occur? I’ve researched on the internet and read a lot about it but any additional information would be apreciated. Anything that helps me to understand what goes on the head of people with bipolar disorder. And what medicines are often used, I have a list of some of them but I’m not sure they’re right.

I am 16, and was diagnosed with bipolar May-ish of 2007. I had symptoms of bipolar since my early teens, and suffered from severe depression for several years. My hypomanic episodes became apparent around 14, but I began to have frustrating, miserable mixed episodes more than the wonderful manias. I am primarily depressive, but it seems that every couple of months I will be hypomanic for one to several weeks. I have yet to have a florid mania, which is expected when you are primarily depressed and have mixed episodes, although it is not unlikely that I will experience a full mania later on in life. I will be on medication for the rest of my life.

Common medications I know of:

Lamictal (lamotrogine) which I am on
Eskalith (lithium) which I am on
Abilify

My brain stopped working… I will remember more in about 2 minutes!

Many people, particularly with bipolar II (me) are also prescribed antidepressants… and there is a ton of those. I have taken Remeron and Celexa, and some other one I can’t remember.

Sleep aids are not uncommon, either, because sleep has been proven to greatly affect those with bipolar. When we are hypomanic we get little sleep if any, and this can aggravate the episode. I do not sleep in severe depressions, either, due to the thinking of life and existence and suicide incessantly through the night. I have taken Lunesta (tastes HORRIBLE,) Ambien, Ambien CR, and something with melatonin. Ambien did cause hallucinations and sleepwalking.

Being a teenager with bipolar does give you a different perspective on things… you know teens always have mood swings due to hormones and such, but you have to understand that yours are 100x more extreme, and for me they are often dangerous. You will have to suffer through yours the rest of your life. School can be difficult, particularly in the depressive states. Education, life, everything becomes pointless, and you watch numbly as your hard work vanishes and becomes a 2% overall grade. Then you are slapped in the face once the cloud is lifted and overwhelmed by the devastation your disease has caused. Life seems hopeless… this is a foreshadowing of the rest of your projectedly pitiful life. Then you get to a hypomania, and you begin to kickass in school and feel so amazingly wonderful and energized and full of life, as if nothing will stop you. You forget about being bipolar, you forget about misery and depression. You bask in the ecstasy. Nothing is impossible.

And then you crash. The cycle continues.

You learn to communicate with teachers and employers and friends (the few that you still have after various episodes) about what is going on. You confront the humiliation of telling an authority figure that you are bipolar, knowing they will have a warped idea of what the disorder is. You then will have to explain in great detail the truth of the disease and the severity it can hold.

You grow up a lot quicker, it seems, as an adolescent with bipolar than your average teen. You learn a lot about life, its opposite, and the powers of the brain. You deal with depression, anxiety, anger, and elation, sometimes all at once. Sometimes it is unfathomable that you can possibly survive the next episode… you have no control over what your mind will do to you this time. All you can do is hope and hope and hope for a pure hypomania, with its wonders and greatness, and hope for an absense of a crash. It is hard not to wish for that AMAZING feeling everyday, and dreading the deadly onset of depression or a mixed episode.

Statistic: At least 50% of all people with bipolar will commit suicide.

Lovely, huh?

Hope this helped in the slightest degree,

Anna