What are the treatments available for bipolar disorder?

Mood stabilizers are a common treatment for bipolar disorder. HealthMaker Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, a psychiatrist at The Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. discusses medications and the important components of a successful treatment plan.

Transcript

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It's important when somebody takes an antidepressant medicine if they have bipolar disorder to make sure that they're

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taking a mood stabilizer. Because sometimes taking an antidepressant, if they don't have the mood stabilizer,

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can flip them into a manic episode. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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There are a number of medications that are referred to as mood stabilizers.

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So a number of them are available. The most famous one is lithium. And that was the first one that was made available.

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Another one is Depakote. And those are two very widely used medications for bipolar disorder.

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More recently, some of what we refer to as the second generation or atypical antipsychotic

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medications have also been used for bipolar disorder as well-- sometimes alone, sometimes in combination

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with some of the other medicines. And in addition, in order to treat the depression that's

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associated with bipolar disorder, often people take an antidepressant medicine.

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It's important when somebody takes an antidepressant medicine if they have bipolar disorder to make sure that they're taking a mood stabilizer,

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because sometimes taking an antidepressant, if they don't have a mood stabilizer, can flip them into a manic episode.

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So you want to be very careful about the medication management that the person has. In addition to that, it's important to have

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talk therapy to help the person deal with issues in their life, to develop ways to deal with stress and reduce stress.

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So that's an important component of successful treatment as well.