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Bipolar 2: Mood Swings but not Manic
While this site is about Bipolar 2 and its many cousins, don’t let the term throw you. This site is much more about depression than about “bipolar”. It’s about the entire spectrum of mood problems that are more than plain depression but not ever manic.
Bipolar 2 and its close relatives are far more common than the full manic-depressive Bipolar I. But it is often mistaken for plain depression because “hypomania” — a little manic — can be subtle. In some forms of bipolarity it can be absent. Diagnostically this really complicates things!
For many people with bipolarity (not manic, but not plain depression either), antidepressants are not the answer. They can help, for a while, but can also make things worse: agitated, anxious, irritable, insomniac…
The information here — a couple hundred searchable pages — is free. There are no strings, no ads, no storing any information about you. I wrote it for my patients, but since 2001 people from all over the world have been here.
Start with these two pages.
Diagnosis: Bipolar 2 and Mood Spectrum depression
Treatment: Avoid the Big Guns – Bipolar 2 and spectrum depressions may not need them
You can also use the Table of Contents or the Search spyglass, up there to your right, to tour 200+ pages of information. I hope you’ll find something useful here. (If your inner skeptic is saying “who is this guy and why’s he doing this?”, that’s good. See About This Site above.)
Author of:
- A Spectrum Approach to Mood Disorders (Norton, 2016)
- Bipolar, Not So Much (Norton, 2016)
- Why Am I Still Depressed? (McGraw-Hill, 2006)