Memory Lapse & Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is a mental illness characterized by great swings in moods, called phases, that can last for weeks or months. About 5.7 million in the United States have been diagnosed with it, and about 4 million people in the United Kingdom. One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is experiencing a memory lapse.

Significance in Manic Phase

• Short-term memory lapse often comes about during the manic phase. During this phase, the person feels supercharged, does not sleep, has racing thoughts and multitudes of new ideas, engages in risky or outrageous behavior, and experiences short-term memory loss because of exhaustion. Also, because ideas are hitting the person so rapidly, their memories can't keep up with their ideas, actions and promises.

Significance in Depressive Phase

• Short-term memory loss can also happen in the depressive phase, which is the polar opposite of the happy, hyper, manic phase. In the depressive phase, the patient has problems sleeping, feels worthless and is not able to find any joy in life. This fatigue and feelings of failure not only contribute to short-term memory loss, but also to the inability to recall anything good that has happened in their lives.

Misconceptions

• The memory loss that accompanies bipolar disorder is not a symptom of or indicator of development of Alzheimer's disease. A person with bipolar disorder may forget where his or her keys are, but a person with more advanced Alzheimer's will forget what the keys are for.

Time Frame

• The first symptoms of the manic-depressive cycle can happen in one's childhood, teens or early twenties. The length of time of a manic phase differs from person to person, but the average length of time is one month. It then is followed by the depressive phase. There can be stretches of weeks, months or years before the manic phase starts up again. This pattern of behavior happens for the rest of a person's life.

Memory Lapse and Medication

• Symptoms of bipolar disorder, including memory lapses, can be lessened with medications like mood stabilizers. Because of the tendency to have memory lapses, manic depressives should write down when they need to take their medication and separate their daily medication into baggies or weekly pillboxes in order not to miss a dose. People who are on medication for bipolar disorder typically need to stop drinking alcoholic beverages, because they can interfere with the efficacy of the medication.

Suicide Risk

• Partially because of memory lapses, people with bipolar disorder are 15 to 20 percent more likely to commit suicide than people without bipolar disorder (see Resources). They will either engage in a task they forget is dangerous (resulting in inadvertent suicide), or they will be so depressed they will forget that any good was ever present in their lives.