Treatment of Bipolar Disorder Goes Psychotic

 

Ever since I did my psychiatric residency training way back in 1974-1977, bipolar disorder (then called manic-depressive illness) was the easiest of the major psychiatric disorders to treat medically. There was (and is) absolutely no evidence the craziness of the patient during a manic episode or a bipolar depressive episode is amenable to any psychotherapy technique, although therapy might be important when the patient is euthymic (that is, not in a manic or depressive episode – which is most of the time) to deal with the aftermath of their having been psychotic or for other co-morbid psychological problems. Euthymic bipolar patients can have co-occurring personality disorders and anxiety disorders and anything else just like anyone. Since, when euthymic, they are in fact just like everyone else.

If you want to see what a manic patient looks like, look at this video of Charlie Sheen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pipTwjwrQYQ). He actually took a show on the road but had no act. Now, cocaine can mimic mania, but he’d taken cocaine before and he never acted like this. See videos of him when he was back to his usual self to see the difference. Sheen denies he was manic, but I’m not sure I believe that.

Anyway, about 80% of these patients could tolerate and were responsive to lithium for prevention of manic episodes. The longer they took it, the more likely it would be to also prevent depressive episodes as well. If the patient got depressed while taking lithium, antidepressants worked just great. Journal articles saying they do not were full of crap – the most important of these is discussed in this post.  Most of my patients on lithium were basically symptom free for decades, no matter if I saw them in a public clinic, an academic clinic, or a private practice environment.

 

When patients first got manic, we used antipsychotic medications to bring them down, usually in inpatient settings, because lithium takes a couple of weeks to kick in. Once lithium was on board, we discontinued the antipsychotic medication because they didn’t need it any more. The only other time we used antipsychotic medication in bipolar patients was during depressive episodes in which the patient also had delusions and hallucinations (psychotic depression). Again, the antipsychotic meds could often be discontinued after the episode was over.

 

When a patient couldn’t tolerate or was not responsive to lithium, we would then use antipsychotic medications as the only alternative back then, but always had to worry about them causing a neurological disorder (tardive dyskinesia [TD]). Until it was found that the anticonvulsants Tegretol and Depakote were good for mood stabilization – so then they became the second line drugs.

 

When the new, “second generation” antipsychotics came out, which can cause huge weight gain and diabetes in addition to TD, the drug companies started to push them. The use of lithium started to plummet. After it was found that some of them had some antidepressant effects – although usually only to augment an antidepressant – Pharma started to push them even more. Despite the major risks, use of them increased from 12% of cases to 53% of cases between 1997 and 2008.

 

Not only that, but the number of patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder inflated by more than double since 2000. Everybody and their brother who had any mood symptoms at all were misdiagnosed with it, most due to the insane idea known as “bipolar spectrum,” or as I call it, B.S. Another study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry that I wrote about previously  showed that 40% of patients in their sample who met clear DSM criteria for borderline personality and not for bipolar had been misdiagnosed as bipolar by a prior mental health professional, as well as 10% of all of the other patients.

Caveat emptor, which in this case means, let the patient beware!