A Day in a Life of a Person With Bipolar Disorder, Research Paper Example

Alice is a 13 year old girl who had been having a hard time dealing with her peers and her regular conditions of personal function as a regular teenager. She was not always like this, as her father could recall. She is noted by her father to be a cheerful child; a girl who knew what she wanted; and when she has already set her head on something, no one else can keep her from attaining such goal. However, when her mother passed away because of a car accident; the situation was unprecedented and somehow, this made a mark on how Alice remembered her mom. Her father recalls that she began to withdraw from her peers ever since the event has happened. She has been observed to have left the memorial service of her mother even when her friends were there waiting for her. Along with this, massive attitude adjustments have been observed on her, especially when it comes to dealing with her peers.

Instead of being the old-fashioned outgoing person that she was, she became less interested in going out with friends and preferred staying at home, in her room, reading her books. Her father notes that this was exactly the opposite of who she was then [before her mother passed away]. She was the youngest among three siblings. All her sisters are already married making her the only girl in the house. When she was brought to a psychiatrist, the diagnosis pointed out that she had a strong inkling when it comes to measuring the level of attachment she has with people around her, including the stability of her environment. Her cheerful being became rather unstable when people closest to her heart began to change their lifestyles. Her sisters moving out of the house has already caused such change in her; however, the death of her mother was a turning point that determined her incapacity to handle such point of distress.

When she was asked during the point of diagnosing the situation, she knew she had to answer the questions fully, however, the psychiatrist notes that she pauses every now and then and tries to change her mood when she is asked if she feels sad. Relatively, the psychiatrist accounts for this as her point of denial. It insists on the fact that even though it has already been a year that has passed since her mother died, she still has not accepted her loss fully. Noticeably, it could be realized that with this condition of thinking, she has tried to cover up the pain; her withdrawal from connection with her peers marks her desire to just keep the matter to herself. She thought or assumed that when it comes to her situation, no one is supposedly ready to take on the chance to understand her or at least relate to what she feels; as a result, she shuts herself from everyone else. She feels safer this way because she is not in need of responding to any question that her peers may throw on her. Her silence is what comforts her, because this way, she is not reminded of her mother’s memories at all; although at the back of her head, this is where she feels comfortable, because this is the only way she can keep her mother’s memory alive, the time when she does not need to feel that she has to accept the situation of losing her dear mother to an unprecedented accident.

Her inability to take into account the reality of such accident and make a good sense of response out of it made it harder for her to recognize the need to take on the challenge and accept the situations accordingly. Most likely, her desire to be with her mother because she was not able to say goodbye makes her remorse even harder. The mood swings she has been reported to have encountered for the past six months were a sign that she was undergoing a massive change of attitude towards life; the sudden change of situations have definitely created a new sense of realization on her being able to handle the pressures that life offers her with.

Most likely, it is the desire to move on that makes it harder for her to keep on moving forward. Her being stuck with the memory of her mother suggests that she cannot shake her mind off from the attachment that she has with her mother; and this is what’s making it impossible for her to embrace a new sense of realization of her new life and her new being. The identifiable cause of such massive mood swings has caused her to develop bipolar disorder that is most often than not harder to contend with. Intervening in such case does create a definite turn of events especially in altering the behavior and the perception of the patient in concern. When altering such condition, psychiatrists are guided to look through the situation fully, to know the client directly and become more involved in the process of taking initiative in assisting her become more realistic in measuring the situation and gauging her capacity to accept matters as they happen.

Gauging the reality and having a more definite term of accepting them makes it easier for Alice to make a mark on how she takes on another step forward. Her willingness to let go of the past would only be helped through assisting her in developing a more positive perspective about life, thus making it easier for her to engage in regular situations and social connections that she ought to be involved in as a teenager. The adjustments would be longer than expected; nevertheless, pushing for such point of personal development is something that would best support the need of Alice to get back on track with her life and her goals for her future.

Having a bipolar disorder is treatable; however, not being able to develop the right behavior towards it makes the option of development harder. Bringing forth some point of change from such situation and the way the patient responds to it would largely depend on the strategy of psychiatric intervention used on the person. Alice, being a teenager, needs a friendlier approach; however gauging her past attitude and the changes that she has incurred through time, the psychiatrist who is to handle her should be able to make a mark on her character and her behavior through mandating a sense of control on how she tends to embrace the reality of her situation and how she needs to accept matters and make sure that these situations would make up a more positive indication of growth rather than a negative effect on her being.

References

Joseph, Chris (2008). Manicdotes: There’s Madness in His Method. London: Austin & Macauley. Amazon review.

Goodwin, F. K.; Jamison, K. R. (2007). Manic–depressive illness: bipolar disorders and recurrent depression (2nd. ed.). Oxford University Press.

Jamison, Kay Redfield (1995). An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. New York: Knopf.

Leahy, Robert L.; Johnson, Sheri L. (2003). Psychological Treatment of Bipolar Disorder. New York: The Guilford Press.