I have bipolar disorder and i'm taking lithium 900 and qutipin 400 per day. I couldn't sleep from yesterday night even after I took some herbal sleeping meds. I couldn't sleep for some nights in the past and it's occurring frequently. 4 months ago, I got admitted in a hospital and had 6 ects. Please help.
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Dear lybrate-user, bipolar disorder is life long recurrent disorder. With lithium 900, though you are unable to prevent, you get mild depressive episodes on and off. Due the depression, the sleep is not satisfactory. In the worst part of depression, you need ects to prevent suicide or partial suicide like resigning job, not taking any new responsibility, marital problems etc. Though you improve on suicidal ideas with ects, you need to take quetiapine for few more months to get out of depression fully. Sleep satisfaction will be there once your depressive phase passes away. Don't worry too much about sleep and don't try any sleep remedies. Some of them are addicting. Continue follow up with your psychiatrist regularly. After all depressive episode in bipolar disorder, is self limiting. Please be on the look out for normal mood soon.
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ECTs are normally the last line of treatment. It sounds like you may have quite a serious condition. Sleep deprivation is quite common especially during the manic phase. You must make sure that you cooperate because many times you will not believe that there is something wrong and would love to quit the medication. Complying with all the medical prescriptions and working in tandem with a counselor for a long time and learning coping skills and techniques to handle the daily challenges the person will face is very important. There are certain adaptations that will suit you during the elation phase and there are certain behaviors that are required during the depressed phases. In the meantime you can do certain things that will give you benefits anyway. Emotional therapy will alleviate a lot of the problems faced in this condition because it is a mood disorder. You need to particularly look at your levels of anger both for its reasonableness and to express it in appropriate manner. I suspect that much of this anger may have origins in early childhood that you may never be aware of. You must talk to your parents and explore that angle. This information will help the counselor too. Also you will need to check whether there is any genetic factor involved. You must exercise regularly, eat healthily and sleep normally too. If your motivation and cooperation is good much can be achieved. You must have a time-structured schedule filled with interesting and reasonable activities and it must be monitored for compliance and delivery. The reason I say this is that many times you will be inclined to have grandiose notions and confidently believe that you can do without the medication. This will set you back many months in the treatment and delay and sabotage the recovery: forewarned you are forearmed. If this combination of medication with therapy is maintained for at least three years without any episodes or breakdowns, it is possible to taper the medication in consonance with the doctor. Bipolar is characterized by two extreme poles i.e. feeling very high (mania), which is when you will suffer from sleep deprivation, and suddenly feeling very low (depression). You can ask the doctor for the symptoms he noticed in you for a personal understanding.
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