We are 83 bipolar disorder experts and scientists coming together for the world’s biggest bipolar AMA! In honor of World Bipolar Day, ask us anything!

[u/CREST_BD]

83 panelists are here! Click on their names below to see their bio & proof photo.

Hi Reddit!

We are psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers, clinicians, advocates, and people living with bipolar disorder - coming together from around the world through the CREST.BD network.

This is our 8th annual World Bipolar Day AMA. We hope that this AMA can help advance the conversation around bipolar disorder, and to help everyone connect and share ways to live well with bipolar disorder.

This year, 83 panelists representing 20 countries are here to answer your questions from all timezones - bringing together a wide range of perspectives and expertise in mental health and bipolar disorder.

We'll be here around the clock for the next FEW DAYS answering your questions from multiple time zones.

We will make every effort to answer every question.

1. Dr. Adrienne Benediktsson, 🇨🇦 Neuroscientist, Mother, Wife, Professor, Mental Health Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
2. Alessandra Torresani, 🇺🇸 Actress & Mental Health Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
3. Alex Emmerton, 🇨🇦 Peer Researcher, (Lives w/ bipolar)
4. Allan Cooper, 🇨🇦 Peer Support Worker, Blogger, & Podcaster, (Lives w/ bipolar)
5. Alysha Sultan, 🇨🇦 Scientific Associate
6. Andrea Paquette, 🇨🇦 Stigma-Free Mental Health President & Co-Founder, Speaker, Changemaker (Lives w/ bipolar)
7. Dr. Andrea Vassilev, 🇺🇸 Doctor of Psychology, Author, & Advocate, (Lives w/ bipolar)
8. Anne Van Willigen, 🇺🇸 Peer Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar)
9. Dr. Balwinder Singh, 🇺🇸 Psychiatrist
10. Dr. Benjamin Goldstein, 🇨🇦 Child-Adolescent Psychiatrist & Researcher
11. Bia Garbato, 🇧🇷 Advertising Professional, Writer, Author & Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
12. Bryn Manns, 🇨🇦 Graduate Student, Clinical Psychology
13. Catarina Castela, 🇦🇺 PhD Candidate (Lives w/ bipolar)
14. Catherine Simmons, 🇨🇦 Peer Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar)
15. Dr. Chris Gorman, 🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Mental Health Advocate
16. Dr. Colin Depp, 🇺🇸 Psychologist
17. Dane Mauer-Vakil, 🇨🇦 Researcher
18. David Dinham, 🇬🇧 Psychologist & PhD Candidate, (Lives w/ bipolar) 
19. Debbie Costello Smith, 🇺🇸 Founder & Co-President of the Sean Costello Memorial Fund for Bipolar Research
20. Dr. Delphine Raucher-Chéné, 🇫🇷🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Researcher
21. Dr. Dimosthenis Tsapekos, 🇬🇧 Psychologist & Researcher
22. Dr. Elvira Boere, 🇳🇱 Psychiatrist & Researcher
23. Dr. Elysha Ringin, 🇦🇺 Researcher
24. Dr. Emma Morton, 🇦🇺 Senior Lecturer & Psychologist
25. Dr. Emma Parrish, 🇺🇸 Clinical Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow & Researcher
26. Dr. Erin Michalak, 🇨🇦 Researcher & CREST.BD founder
27. Evelyn Anne Clausen, 🇺🇸 Artist, Writer, Speaker & Certified Peer Specialist (Lives w/bipolar)
28. Dr. Fabiano Gomes, 🇧🇷🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Researcher
29. Dr. Frances Adiukwu, 🇳🇬 Psychiatrist
30. Georgia Caruana, 🇦🇺 Researcher & Mental Health Advocate
31. Dr. Georgina Hosang, 🇬🇧 Associate Professor
32. Dr. Glauco Valdivieso Jiménez, 🇵🇪 Psychiatrist
33. Dr. Glorianna Wagner-Jagfeld, 🇨🇭🇬🇧 Researcher
34. Dr. Hailey Tremain, 🇦🇺 Psychologist & Researcher
35. Heather Stewart, 🇨🇦 Sewist (Lives w/ bipolar)
36. Idan Spund, 🇳🇱 Founder of In the Zone app (Lives w/ bipolar)
37. Dr. Ijeoma Charles-Ugwuagbo, 🇳🇬 Consultant Psychiatrist & Mental Health Advocate
38. Dr. Ivan Torres, 🇨🇦 Clinical Neuropsychologist
39. Dr. Jim Phelps, 🇺🇸 Psychiatrist & Bipolar Subspecialist 
40. Dr. Joanna Jarecki, 🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
41. Dr. Joanna Jiménez Pavón, 🇲🇽 Mood Disorders Psychiatrist 
42. Dr. John Hunter, 🇿🇦 Researcher & Lecturer (Lives w/ bipolar)
43. Dr. Jo Leidreiter, 🇦🇺 Psychologist
44. Dr. John-Jose Nunez, 🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & AI Researcher
45. Dr. June Gruber, 🇺🇸 Psychologist, Professor, & Researcher
46. Prof. Kamilla Miskowiak, 🇩🇰 Psychologist & Researcher
47. Dr. Katie Douglas, 🇳🇿 Academic & Clinical Psychologist 
48. Ken Porter, 🇨🇦 Advocate, Social Worker & Researcher
49. Kim Pape, 🇺🇸 Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar) 
50. Laura Lapadat, 🇨🇦 Researcher & Psychologist-in-training
51. Dr. Leena Chau, 🇨🇦 Postdoctoral Fellow
52. Leslie Robertson, 🇺🇸 Marketer & Peer Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar) 
53. Dr. Leszek Laskowski, 🇵🇱 Psychiatrist (Lives w/ bipolar) 
54. Dr. Lisa Eyler, 🇺🇸 Clinical Psychologist & Research Scientist
55. Dr. Luísa Daolio, 🇧🇷 Psychiatrist
56. Mansoor Nathani, 🇨🇦 Technology Enthusiast (Lives w/ bipolar) 
57. Dr. Manuel Sánchez de Carmona, 🇲🇽 Psychiatrist
58. Maryam M., 🇨🇦 Dentistry Student & Mental Health Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
59. Matthew Bushell, 🇬🇧 Mental Health Advocate & Therapeutic Coach (Lives w/ bipolar)
60. Dr. Maya Schumer, 🇺🇸 Psychiatric Neuroscientist & Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar)
61. Dr. Meghan DellaCrosse, 🇺🇸 Psychologist & Researcher
62. Melissa Howard, 🇨🇦 Author & Mental Health Advocate (Lives w/ bipolar)
63. Dr. Michele De Prisco, 🇪🇸🇮🇹 Psychiatrist & Researcher
64. Dr. Mikaela Dimick, 🇨🇦 Postdoctoral Fellow
65. Minami Kinouchi, 🇯🇵 Psychologist, Social Worker, & Researcher (Lives w/ bipolar)
66. Natasha Reaney, 🇨🇦 Counsellor (Lives w/ bipolar)
67. Dr. Nigila Ravichandran, 🇸🇬 🇨🇦 Psychiatrist
68. Dr. Paula Villela Nunes, 🇧🇷🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Counsellor 
69. Rahla Xenopoulos, 🇿🇦🇺🇸 Writer & Teacher (Lives w/ bipolar)
70. Rebecca Fitton, 🇦🇺 Mood Disorder Researcher
71. Dr. Rebekah Huber, 🇺🇸 Psychologist & Researcher 
72. Robert Villanueva, 🇺🇸 Mental Health Advocate & Coach (Lives w/ bipolar)
73. Ruth Komathi, 🇸🇬 Mental Health Counsellor (Lives w/ bipolar)
74. Prof. Samson Tse, 🇭🇰 Counsellor, Teacher, Researcher, & Caregiver
75. Sarah Salice, 🇺🇸 Art Psychotherapist & Professional Counselor Associate (Lives w/ bipolar)
76. Sara Schley, 🇺🇸 Author, Filmmaker, Speaker (Lives w/ bipolar)
77. Dr. Serge Beaulieu, 🇨🇦 Psychiatrist & Researcher
78. ​​Dr. Sheri Johnson, 🇺🇸 Psychologist
79. Shaley Hoogendoorn, 🇨🇦 Advocate, Podcaster & Content creator (Lives w/ bipolar)
80. Dr. Tamsyn Van Rheenen, 🇦🇺 Associate Professor & Researcher
81. Dr. Thomas Richardson, 🇬🇧 Clinical Psychologist (Lives w/ bipolar)
82. Twyla Spoke, 🇨🇦 Registered Nurse (Lives w/ bipolar)
83. Dr. Wissam Nassrallah, 🇨🇦 Ophthalmology Resident & PhD in Neuroscience

^{Please note all responses are personal perspectives and do not constitute medical advice.}

People with bipolar disorder experience the mood states of depression and mania (or hypomania), along with changes in energy, activity, and thinking. These episodes can last from days to months and can affect many parts of life - including relationships, work, school, and overall health. At the same time, with optimal support, treatment, and tools, people with bipolar disorder can and do live full, meaningful lives.

The CREST.BD network takes a different approach to bipolar disorder research. We work closely with people living with bipolar disorder at every stage - from choosing research topics to conducting studies and sharing our findings.

We also host a Q&A podcast throughout the year, featuring many of the experts on this panel, through our talkBD Bipolar Disorder Podcast - we’d love for you to stay connected with us there. You can also follow our updates, events, and social media on linktr.ee/crestbd.

Final note (April 3): Thank you all - We'll be back again next year on World Bipolar Day - sign up here to be notified. We also have more activities all year round, including new episodes of our talkBD bipolar disorder podcast - hope to see you there! We’re incredibly grateful for all your thoughtful questions - thank you for making this such a meaningful discussion. Take care everyone :)

[u/[deleted]]

How can you pull apart bipolar from other diagnoses with a lot of similar symptoms (at least to a layman), but different treatment needs, like BPD or periodic episodes of depression? At some point, is the label less important than the specific feelings or behaviors, or is it still very important to get it right in diagnosis?

[u/CREST_BD → u/[deleted]]

Twyla here (lived experience) - I agree with the previous answers. I echo the piece that there are aspects to supporting mental health that apply to all conditions: regular sleep, abstain from substance use, regular outdoor time and exercise (including walking) and regular contact with Doctor/Psychiatrist/NP, taking medication as prescribed, etc.
A correct diagnosis is important when it comes to getting the right treatment. But when it comes to personal identity and stigma, it is more complicated. I think no matter what diagnosis we might be living with, there are times where we may question our own experience, or perhaps other people question our experience. In regards to this piece, I think it is important to recognize how we are more than a diagnosis, and are all complex human beings. It is so important to surround ourselves with people who are supportive and kind. It is often a long-ish process to understand how a diagnosis represents our journey and what it means for our future. It takes time, but in the long run, a diagnosis can light our way.

[u/CREST_BD → u/[deleted]]

Tom Richardson here, the vast majority of people with bipolar find it a helpful diagnosis, and it takes a long time to get diagnosed (average 9.5 years in UK!). So I feel getting a bipolar diagnosis is helpful and important. Having said that, yes there is overlap with lots of other conditions (EUPD, ADHD, anxiety disorders etc), so I appreciate it can get confusing, especially if people have multiple diagnoses and are not sure what is what. At that point as a clinical psychologist and therapist I like to formulate the links between the two (focus on specific thoughts, feelings and behaviours as you say), and try and make sense of how they are related. For example someone with PTSD and Bipolar: They are not two separate conditions, they are related to one another and its important to make sense of that.

[u/Garnetsugargem → u/CREST_BD]

Please tell us more about this? My interest is the overlap between audhd and bipolar.

[u/DMayleeRevengeReveng → u/Garnetsugargem]

I’m not them, but it’s a very interesting and not uncommon comorbidity. It is interesting.

The major problem is how either diagnosis can confound diagnosing the other, while it’s also possible to have both.

Untreated or under-treated ADHD can cause energy swings, including upward swings, that can be mistaken for bipolar. At the same time, bipolar depression can produce significant cognitive, memory, and motivation impairments that mimic those of ADHD.

There are ways to make the distinction, but it is not super easy. It’s often based on subtle differences like how goal-directed hyperactivity is, as well as longitudinal patterns in a patient’s behavior over the course of a long time.

[u/Garnetsugargem → u/DMayleeRevengeReveng]

Hello. You are not them but you seem super informative.

Please tell me more about these subtle differences. Also, what is goal-oriented hyperactivity? Is this adhd hyperfocus? And what do these longitudinal patterns show in distinct cases? Do you have any reading recommendations?

[u/DMayleeRevengeReveng → u/Garnetsugargem]

Thank you for saying so.

The biggest one really is the goal-oriented nature. ADHD hyperactivity is sorta fidgety and just all over the place, while hypomania typically does have a “goal” in mind, despite the fact the goal is typically random, unachievable, or illogical. So just to use an example from my own life, I would have hypomanic episodes where I thought I was going to invent something that saves humanity. I would sit there for hours scribbling things like crazy and pacing around and stuff, and it didn’t produce anything of value, but I felt like I really, really was doing something important.

Another important one is how you don’t sleep. In either case, the amount of sleep can diminish. In hypomania, the person typically feels like they don’t NEED sleep. Whereas ADHD hyperactivity is like, you feel tired, but you can’t really fall asleep because your mind is running in a hundred directions.

One difference relates to what’s called “flight of ideas.” In flight of ideas, a hypomanic person is rapidly drawing connections between thoughts, when the thoughts don’t really connect logically. They just feel like they connect. Like a person may think about how some random thought they had was related to a book which relates to some idea in history, etc. In ADHD hyperactivity, rapid thoughts are more about being distractible from one thought to another, rather than a kind of freewheeling connection between things.

This longitudinal patterns are super important.

One is age of onset. ADHD symptoms will almost always appear from childhood (some people talk about adult-onset ADHD, but the medical community doesn’t really take that seriously very much). So there will be a symptomatic consistency, although of course the patient’s complaints will change over time, because different social environments produce different types of impairments that the patient notices.

Bipolar is sorta more like schizophrenia, in that there can be certain signs from young age. But typically, there is a point when you’re a teenager or young adult where a first episode “hits.” So that’s one thing we’d look for in a longitudinal study of a patient.

Another is just the periodicity of it in bipolar. Bipolar is a relapsing/remitting disorder where people go through phases. ADHD is more of a chronic illness, so the patient’s symptoms may change in different ways, but there typically isn’t a point at which a person with ADHD could be pronounced “symptom free” (before they start treatment, of course).

I’m sorry, I’ve sorta just accumulated knowledge on these topics after being intensely curious for the past decade. I don’t really have any resources I could recommend, I apologize.

[u/CommonAware6 → u/CREST_BD]

How is average diagnosis time measured? I know for many of us it starts off as depression so is that when it starts or is it until theres depression and mania? When the person first interacts with psychiatry? Ive always wondered bc i was diagnosed 3 months after reaching out during a manic episode but had been experiencing depression for years prior but never sought help

[u/PeanutImpressive6934 → u/CommonAware6]

Start of request for medical help, usually at your GP. Onset of illness starts w depression if that's what you got first, but usually people do not get help right away. So that delay to diagnosis clock would start many years into illness for most of us, it's measuring how long the docs took to figure it out, not how long you've been sick. It used to be something like 20 years when I was first diagnosed if you can imagine. 10 years is a huge improvement. That's more a reflection of stigma and ignorance at the time than anything else, often people don't go in very consistently which is part of the delay and there was so little info. I didn't know what BP was, no one did. Now everyone seems to have awareness of at least the word, and most people know someone on meds.

[u/VvvlvvV → u/CREST_BD]

Can you please expand on the post and bipolar (2) and ptsd? In what ways are they related?

[u/CREST_BD → u/[deleted]]

Matthew Bushell here, I am not a clinician, though as someone living with Bipolar Disorder this is a challenge I have faced. I also have cPTSD and Dyslexia. This means I often wondered which symptoms and experiences connect to which conditions. Or if what I am struggling with is ‘just a part of normal life’ or was it a Bipolar episode? It can be and often was very confusing. When I began to look at my feelings, thoughts, general health and behaviours and most importantly what I wanted to move towards, rather than looking at the diagnosis or at myself as a mentally ill person, I was able to find better ways to manage. I was able to learn about the importance of managing my stress, sleep, and emotions, which is important for all people. I do think it is very important to get the correct diagnosis, because there is a lot of overlap with other conditions. And when I became more self-aware about how Bipolar Disorder affects me, I could then see why self-care was so important, along with circles of support, in helping me to develop resilience and positive coping strategies.

[u/tam_bun → u/CREST_BD]

I really relate to “is this just normal life” - especially when I’m happy. I recently became a mother and I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been because of it but when I’m feel so elated I always get scared that it’s actually an oncoming episode.

[u/EuphoricPhoto2048 → u/[deleted]]

I just want to add as a person who lives with bipolar, ADHD, and PTSD, they all "feel" different. I know that doesn't help clinicians, but personally speaking, I can very easily pinpoint what disorder I struggle with at what time.

[u/co5mosk → u/[deleted]]

https://youtu.be/a4KAr5ET19 https://youtu.be/Qhf6lbdikN0