Bipolar and OCD are mental disorders related which are rare in occurrence but severe in their symptoms. In this article, you will learn about these disorders, their symptoms and treatment.
What is bipolar disorder & its symptoms?
Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression. It is a mental disorder in which the patient experience severe mood changes, followed by emotional extremes like mania, hypomania, and depression. The mood swings occur multiple times in a year instead of in a continuous state. Age of occurrence of bipolar disorder is formed from teen years to adult age in the early ’20s. Although it can occur at any age, some children also become the victim of disease due to certain crises but symptom severity varies from patient to patient. Sometimes, mania or hypomania is followed by extreme depression attack.
Depression: During the phase of depression, the patient feels down, hopeless, sad, and disappointed. In a severe attack, he is not even able to communicate properly with his family or social circle. It also affects his performance in his job or daily life activities. Some patients do suicidal attempts during the depression phase.
Mania: When the condition shifts to a manic state, he feels more energized, decreased urge to sleep, desires to do activities anxiously, more talkative, and behaves unusually from reality. Mania is a severe condition that is clearly noticeable and the patient needs to be hospitalized for treatment. It affects the normal life activities of a person badly.
Hypomania: it has almost the same symptoms as mania but this is a less extreme condition. This also includes at least three symptoms as mania like the increased urge of activities, enhanced sense of confidence, and weird behavior.
What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder & its symptoms?
It is a mental disorder in which a patient has unwanted obsessions (craze) to do some activities repetitively (compulsive). This is an abnormal condition and patients experience different types of obsessions related to cleanliness and harm from some other or fear situation.
In some people, individuals have focused thoughts, and linked repeated actions do not harm their routine life. But thoughts in OCD patients are constant and nonstop due to which patient behavior is rigid. Sometimes these obsessions and compulsions are so constant that they take more time from hours to more than a day. Patients become distracted from other important tasks instead of indulged abnormally in an unnecessary sensation. You may have observed such a patient who has the obsession of cleaning, he washes his hands again and again and for a long time, cleans his place much time to avoid germs, does not want to meet other people due to constant thoughts of acquiring germs from another person.
Age of occurrence for OCD is mostly young or teenage.
Treating OCD and bipolar disorders with psychotherapy
Patients with these mental disorders ruin their normal life but did not even realize this due to their mental condition. It is necessary to treat such patients to reduce the symptom severity and relapse of the diseases. In some cases, these diseases prolong for the rest of a patient’s life but in some cases, patients are cured to some extent with medication and continue their life with psychotherapy sessions. KOSHISH CLINIC in Lahore is the most recognized psychotherapeutic center for successive Bipolar and OCD management. It has a team of specialized psychiatrists who have wide experience of treating such patients and bringing back to normal life.
Psychotherapy
Psychiatric counseling or psychotherapy is the major treatment that can help the patient to live normally and control his behaviors. A professional psychiatrist motivates the patient effectively to change his thinking patterns and involves him in the situations in which he learns how to control his actions against unnecessary obsessions. In the same way, the patient is encouraged to control his mood swings in bipolar disorder. A psychiatrist helps him to pass easily from the episodes of depression and mania/hypomania. Psychotherapy is the only solution to keep the patients calm and it is essential to continue throughout life.
When a trust bond develops between the patient and the counselor, it helps the patient to reveal his ongoing condition, his thoughts, and fears to the doctor. He can refer to some other physician for proper medication as well as guides the patient to participate in healthy activities like exercise and yoga. Treatment efficiency depends upon the condition of the patient. As early as the treatment starts, it helps shortly to return to normal life.
