Bipolar disorder or manic depression is a common mental health condition that can lead to extreme mood swings. The emotional highs and lows that you may experience in this disorder can deteriorate your mental well-being while leading to various symptoms such as distraction, poor decision-making, depressed mood, loss of energy, and sleeping disturbances. Various medications and therapies are available that can manage the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT is another effective bipolar disorder treatment in Siliguri that the doctor may recommend.
CBT can be an effective add-on treatment for patients, especially for those who have a limited response to other treatments or medications. You must know that bipolar disorder also increases the risk of various co-occurring conditions such as sleeping disorders, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders. These disorders can also be effectively managed by beneficial CBT techniques. CBT introduces interventions to change your behaviour and thoughts while offering you sufficient education to control the severity of the episodes.
Role of CBT in Effectively Treating Bipolar Mood Disorder
- Enhances medical adherence
One of the main roles of CBT is to enhance medical compliance. In most therapeutic interventions, it is claimed that you don’t need any further medications. However, CBT is the most realistic therapy that helps in maintaining medical compliance even during worse mood episodes. You must always know that consistent medication plays a vital role in increasing the effectiveness of CBT.
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Improves self-control
Bipolar disorder often increases the chances of unpredictable mood swings. These mood swings cause anxiety and depression where you may feel manic on one day and depressed the other day. Herein, CBT can play a role in improving your self-control while making you efficient in controlling the distressing symptoms of bipolar disorder. Through CBT, you can understand what and when you must do a thing to control mood episodes.
- Avoids hospitalization
Patients suffering from bipolar disorder often experience hospitalizations either due to mania or depression. The relapse prevention measures adopted through CBT will help you avoid the likelihood of hospitalization since it will help you control the symptoms even before they escalate to an emergency condition. There are various medications and CBT techniques that can help avoid hospitalizations and recover from the symptoms effectively.
- Increases interpersonal relationship
Bipolar disorder patients often experience various interpersonal conflicts. These interpersonal conflicts both at work and home can be mended through CBT. Behavioral modifications, communication skills, and self-monitoring are some of the effective techniques of CBT that can effectively improve interpersonal relationships with your near ones. This therapy will make you understand the changes you need to make in your behaviour to communicate with the other person effectively.
- Boosts success rates
Effective CBT techniques can significantly help you boost your success rates at school and work. The skills that you will learn during CBT therapy sessions are highly beneficial to improve your interaction abilities, school and work performance, and daily task compliance. All these factors can enable you to control symptom flare-ups while managing your behaviour in school and the workplace. CBT makes one able to tackle the stress factors and share their concerns for better mental well-being.
- Ensures overall well-being
CBT is not just used in treating bipolar disorder symptoms but is universally used to focus on the connection between behaviour, thoughts, and feelings. Once the therapist helps you identify this connection, you can use the learned skills in your daily life to enhance your overall well-being. Starting from eliminating negative self-talk to identifying triggering emotions, CBT can play a major role in handling countless situations.
CBT Techniques Used For Managing Bipolar Disorder
1. Self-monitoring
Self-monitoring is one of the most effective CBT techniques. In this technique, the self-reporting of bipolar disorder symptoms is utilized to collect information about the concerning thoughts and emotions. Remember that the effectiveness of the treatment increases when the person himself shares information about his health status. Herein, CBT helps the person to track and identify the concerning symptoms effectively.
2. Knowing about the cognitive trial
CBT doesn’t work without making the patient understand the relationship between feelings, thoughts, behaviour, about themselves, and the future. Herein, the patient needs to gain proper insights about the cognitive triad so that they can precisely understand the undesired emotions. You must know that changing the undesired behaviours and thoughts is the key to improving the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
3. Cognitive restructuring
When one of the best doctors for bipolar disorder in Siliguri recommends CBT, the main technique that they adopt is cognitive restructuring. The key role of this CBT technique is to help the person adjust the negative thinking and unwanted self-thought. You must note that this technique works wonders in making the patient develop positive feelings while detecting and correcting the concerning thoughts.
4. Detecting negative self-talk
Detecting automatic thoughts and negative self-talk is the central technique of CBT. For this technique, the patient is advised by the therapist to note down the thinking patterns and then report it to the therapist. These understanding of the thinking patterns will help the doctor understand the unwanted symptoms so that those can be managed effectively with medications or therapy.
5. Planning for relapse prevention
As per the nature of bipolar disorder, it is quite natural for you to suffer from other mood episodes just after experiencing one. This makes it extremely essential for you to have a plan for relapse prevention. You must know that relapse prevention helps in managing the sudden shifts into depressive and manic episodes while following a simplified procedure of detecting the trigger signs.
6. Behaviour modification
The bipolar disorder treatment in Siliguri with CBT may also include the technique of behaviour modification. During bipolar disorder, the patient may experience too little to excessive motivation, drive, or energy. Through CBT, the therapist can help you find unwanted behavioural patterns so that they can be modified to control the symptoms of bipolar disorder. A sense of stability and balance can be attained with this technique.
7. Communication skills
Another effective technique of CBT is the improvement of communication skills. While suffering from bipolar disorder, it is quite normal to experience difficulties in sharing what you feel. Herein, with CBT you can effectively share your feelings and emotions with other people. When you learn communication skills you get to express your wants and needs not only your near ones but also the mental health professionals.
8. Problem-solving
With CBT, you also get to learn about handling problematic situations by recognizing possible solutions. CBT utilizes the technique of improving problem-solving ability so that you can effectively handle mood episodes. Once you have applied your problem-solving skills to a situation, the therapist may assess it to see your improvements.
9. Mood tracking
Mood tracking is another technique of CBT that helps the person to track their mood. In this technique, the patient is encouraged to keep a mood journal so that they can track and rate their mood. This is one of the most beneficial techniques as it helps in detecting mood triggers and fluctuations leading to persistent mood episodes.
Comprehensive planning with CBT and medication can be the best bipolar disorder treatment in Siliguri with high success rates. Remember that as per your condition the doctor may advise you to attend the CBT sessions in groups or individually where various other therapies such as integrated group therapy or mindfulness-based cognitive strategy can also be utilized.
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