The Importance of Mood Charts Bipolar Disorder

Mood charts bipolar disorder can be helpful because they provide a visual medium for the patient to recognize mood patterns before they become more problematic.

The act of recording how they feel may make patients more self-aware of mood changes and triggers. Identifying triggers can help patients better regulate their affect.

For bipolar patients who are in therapy, the mood chart can jog the memory of the ups and downs they experience between sessions. The therapist may also gain insights from reviewing the patient's mood log.

Finally, once the patient recognizes the patterns and triggers of mood swings, they can use the chart as an alarm of sorts. The chart can help the patients identify when they are most prone to mood instability.

Some Bipolar Mood Disorder Symptoms Tied to Medication-Induced Mood Swings

People with bipolar depression who take antidepressant medication face an elevated risk of fast mood swings even if few manic mood disorder symptoms exist, scientists discovered.

Even patients with bipolar illness who report low symptoms of distractibility, racing thoughts, agitation, and rapid speech were substantially more likely to experience manic episodes when put on antidepressants. The findings were reported by Dr. Mark Frye of the Mayo Clinic.

Since medication-induced mania is "volatile and very destructive for the patient as well as their family," Dr. Frye explained that he is much more sensitive to the risks of using such medications now and will be more inclined to offer alternative remedies, like therapy or mood stabilizers.

The results are the first to corroborate an increased risk of rapid medication-induced mood cycling and contribute to growing evidence against the use of antidepressants for bipolar illness.

Mood Disorders in Young Children May Lead to Disruptive Behavior

When people see disruptive behaviors in children, they often leap to the conclusion that ADHD is the culprit. However, ADHD is not the only disorder that can lead to disruptive behaviors; anxiety and mood disorders in young children also manifest very similar symptoms.

For one, a child may suffer from anxiety, causing him to feel tense, worried, or panicky for no real reason. The child may then act out to assuage some of these anxious feelings.

Mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder can cause irritability, mood swings, and even anger in some children. Manic behavior in a bipolar child can easily be mistaken for ADHD.

Finally, a child may suffer from epilepsy, a seizure disorder that causes powerful jolts of neurological electrical activity. Some types of seizures may seem like symptoms of ADHD.

Magnets Used as Mood Disorder Treatments

Depression impacts about fifteen million adult American annually. Compared to all other medical illnesses, depression is the number-one cause of disability in the U.S.

Multiple mood disorder treatments exist for depression. The three most popular conventional treatments are psychopharmacology, therapy, and shock therapy, or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

However, a new, unconventional treatment has recently emerged called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). TMS is an experimental therapy that utilizes magnetic fields to stimulate a certain portion of the brain.

Researchers theorize that the stimulus restores malfunctioning brain circuitry and eventually ameliorates depressive symptoms. TMS therapy sessions usually take 20-30 minutes, and patients can undergo them several times each week. Doctors claim about 10-20 therapy sessions are necessary for positive results.

Bipolar Mood Disorder Connected to Risk of Premature Death from Natural Causes

Bipolar mood disorder seems to elevate the risk of premature death from medical ailments, according to a study in the Psychiatric Services journal.

The evidence indicates that sufferers of bipolar disorder have increased mortality rates from natural causes compared to those of the same age and gender with no mental illness. The research estimated the risk to be between 35%-200% higher.

The most frequent illnesses causing premature death in bipolar patients were cardiovascular disease, respiratory illnesses, stroke, and diabetes. Previously, the elevated incidence of premature death in people with bipolar disorder was attributed to the population's high rate of accidents and suicide.

"The review of data gathered from large population studies suggests that having bipolar disorder is similar to being a smoker in terms of increasing a person's risk of early death," explained Dr. Wayne Katon, a psychiatry professor at the University of Washington.

Nicotine Exposure Elevates Risk of Mood Disorders

According to a new study from Florida State University, exposure to nicotine in the teenage years might elevate the risk of mood disorders like dysthymia and depression.

In the study, scientists gave adolescent rats shots of either nicotine or saline twice per day for fifteen days. In later tests, the researchers placed the rats in pleasant and stressful situations.

The rats that had received nicotine injections displayed behaviors indicative of depression and anxiety, like obsessive grooming, attenuated reward consumption, and remaining still in stressful circumstances instead of attempting to escape. These behaviors were ameliorated when the rats were administered additional doses of nicotine or antidepressant medications.

Mature, or adult, rats given identical levels of nicotine did not display the depressed and anxious traits that the nicotine-exposed adolescent rats did. According to the researchers, the study's results may also be applicable to human behavior.