How To Easily Know If The Bipolar Meds Are Working Or Not

bipolar

On this post, I want to answer a question I get all the time. And that is “how do I know if my loved one is taking their meds or not?” And it's a great question because we don't really want to be asking that of our loved ones because you already know this. If you ask your loved one and you suspect they're not taking their medication and they know that that's what you suspect and then you go and ask them, “are you taking your meds?” You know, that's a fight, right? That's always going to end up in an argument. And there are some ways that you can know. And, and the thing I'd like you to do is to take the assumption that the meds are just not working right? Not that they're not taking their meds, they may not be taking them, but let's just, let's just assume they are taking them and work from the meds are not working.

 

And so how can you tell if the meds are not working; which could also mean they're not taking their meds. How can you tell this? Well, there are some obvious signs and especially with bipolar disorder in the manic state, there's some very obvious signs that they're not taking their meds. One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is that the person is very talkative when they're in mania. And I mean talkative and I know that you, you know this, you've seen it in your loved one. They interrupt people, they talk over people. They really never stop talking. They have what's called pressured speech, which is just this need to keep talking. It's just a symptom. They don't, sometimes I'm doing it and I don't even want to be talking, but I can't shut myself up. So pressured talking, talking very fast is going to be another sign.

 

And then having a whole flight of different ideas, they'll start talking about one thing and then move to another and another and another, another, another, another, another, another, another. And never circle back to anything that they started talking about. They're also going to have a lot of goal directed activity. They can have a lot of lot of things that they want to do and they're going to start a lot of projects in there, but they're not going to complete a lot of them because they're going to lose interest in them. They're not going to want to sleep a lot and they're going to find sleep to be a burden because they have so many projects that they want to be working on. And the other thing is when they're talking, they, their mind just cannot keep up with the amount of thoughts that are racing through their head.

 

That's why they're talking so fast. It's impossible. I know this because I've lived this and this is how I know when I'm manic. So if your loved one is exhibiting those signs, especially one or two or more of those signs, then for sure I don't think the meds are working properly. And that's the assumption I would make. And I would maybe say to your loved one, I've noticed that you're doing these things. I understand that there are symptoms of mania. I'm not sure if your meds are working right or not; maybe we should go in and see the doctor. That's how I would approach it. I would definitely not approach it by saying, you know what? I noticed that you're talkative a lot, or all these things, so you must not be taking the meds. Oh my gosh, please don't do that because that is going to turn into a fight and you'll never have that discussion with him or her again. So I hope this helps you a lot. I hope it helps you give an idea of how you might be able to tell if the meds are working or not. Just look for those symptoms and then you'll know.