What Is the Cure Rate for Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar Disorder has become a more usual diagnosis within the last few decades and care extended to bipolar people has advanced a great deal. However, there is no cure for Bipolar Disorder; there is only stabilization. Because there is no real cure, there are no statistics reflecting the successfully treated subjects. There are statistics showing that medical intervention helps, some medicines help and that suicide can be curbed by prescribed psychoactive drugs.

Cure Versus Stabilization

• The important thing to know about Bipolar Disorder and many other mental illnesses is that there is no true cure. What therapists and counselors are hesitant to call a "cure" is actually a "stabilization," which may be permanent or may suffer flair ups in the disorder. Whereas a cure would stop the disorder in its tracks and prevent it from ever occurring again, a stabilized patient is an ill person who literally lives one day at a time. Stabilizations often take years of agonizing effort and may require frequent medical checkups and prescriptions. And there is no guarantee that the stabilization will last. Small things can cause Bipolar Disorder to flare up such as life changes, breakups, personal failures and family relationship problems. Medicine becomes the crucial aspect to initial stabilization and it can be combined with cognitive therapy.

Stabilization

• Bipolar is a cycle of mania and depression. The most dangerous aspect is the mania, although depression can be intense. The first thing that doctors try to stabilize is the mania, because of the dangerous and risk-taking behavior that accompanies it. Doctors mainly use antipsychotics to suppress serious manias and psychotic episodes that may occur with them. A therapist may choose to use mood stabilizers as well to keep the patient from having violent mood swings. Next the depression is treated with medication and some programs use cognitive therapy along with it to attempt to fully stabilize the patient for the time being. Approximately 20 to 30 % of those with Bipolar I and 15% of those with Bipolar II will not see any improvement and their behavior will not change significantly. For these people "protective" care is used such as frequent therapist visits and possibly behavioral counseling.

Bipolar Death Rate

• Between 10 to 15 percent of people with Bipolar Disorder Type I commit suicide, though the highest rate of suicide occurs in people with Bipolar Disorder Type II. Though there is no cure for Bipolar Disorder, only maintenance, one area that could be said to be "cured" is the death-rate among bipolar people. Those who have access to treatment have higher survival rates than those who do not. Since bipolar people have a higher suicide rate than that of the general population, it could be said that treatment cures the desire for suicide and the pull towards death in patients. However, treatment can only stabilize and lessen the effects of severe mood changes seen in Bipolar Disorder and this is what curbs suicides and early deaths.

Psychotic Breaks

• Medicines also help psychotic breaks. Psychosis victims possess sped up or slowed thinking processes. Usually the fast thinking cycles happen in mania and the slowed thinking occurs in depression. Psychosis is a break from reality and applies to many aspects of bipolar, such as grandiose delusions, disordered thought and speech, and disorganized or dangerous actions or behaviors. According to ScientificBlogging.com, 50 to 80 percent of bipolar people experience hallucinations and delusions. In this aspect, the medicine could be called a "cure" if it works well enough and gets the patient re-introduced to normal lifestyles, including family and spousal lifestyles.

Conclusion

• The medical bounds that have been achieved in the past few decades are numerous. However, not many of these cases apply to mental illness. Bipolar is classified with Schizophrenia and a handful of other mental illnesses as SMIs or "serious mental illnesses". The psychiatric world has found no cures, but it has found medicines that help suppress the outburst in bipolar patients. Stabilization is, for now, the only real "cure".