Gaining insight into your triggers and treatment strategies to manage mood swings takes patience and dedication, but it can payoff by helping you achieve stability. Getty Images There is a term that is used in the mental health world called “insight.” In the dictionary, insight is defined as, “the act or result of apprehending the...

My bipolar 1 diagnosis explained my symptoms, but didn’t give me relief. Forget the painful social stigma — I was stigmatizing myself. When people who take psychiatric medications are burdened with guilt and shame from stigmatizing themselves, this is proof of an obvious problem in our world. Sometimes, being diagnosed with a mental health condition...

Often, the most telling sign that I’m experiencing a relapse in my bipolar disorder is silence — the quiet nature of withdrawal itself makes it easy to overlook. A while back, I received a phone call from someone who wanted to check in on the state of my thoughts. I was having a trying mental...

It may not be easy, but letting go of hypomania’s false promises and accepting the challenge of committing to treatment can help you manage your bipolar disorder. Sometimes I miss hypomania. If all my hypomanic episodes didn’t culminate in crushing depression, I’m pretty sure I would still be prancing around untreated, oblivious, and fundamentally convinced...

It’s important to understand the major differences between bipolar depression and unipolar depression — and to help educate others about the distinctions. Most people know what depression looks and feels like — a lack of motivation, waking up in the morning with the thought, What is the point of my life? and asking, Is this all...