Tennessee Mental Health Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder can impact the lives of anyone. There isn’t a specific social and economic status, gender, or age that is common to bipolar disorder. The severity can change depending on access to medical care, environment, genetics, and other conditions.

Treatment typically involves behavioral therapy, medication, and support groups. TRUE Addiction and Behavioral Health’s Tennessee Mental Health Treatment center for bipolar disorder understands that recovery might seem bleak at first mention. But there are options.

No two people have the same personalities; the same is true of mental health treatment plans. Bipolar disorder is a chronic mental illness. The mood disorder affects 5.7 million adults in the U.S. In Tennessee, 20% of adults have a mental illness, including bipolar disorder. Receiving a diagnosis of bipolar disorder can feel life-changing, but it doesn’t have to be.

Tennessee Mental Health Treatment: What is Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar disorder is a mental health issue that affects a person’s mood, energy, and behavior. Medical professionals characterize the complex disease by episodes of extreme highs, considered mania or hypomania, and lows. The lows are the depression side of bipolar disorder. The episodes come between periods of normal moods and can last from a few hours to days into several weeks. 

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), bipolar disorder is characterized by unusually intense emotions. Disruptions in sleep patterns and activity levels accompany these changes. Understanding the differences between manic and depressive episodes is vital to the individual and loved ones offering support.

Types of Bipolar Disorders

Three diagnoses fall under bipolar disorder: bipolar I and II disorders and cyclothymic disorder. It is essential to receive the appropriate diagnosis. Doing so facilitates the necessary treatment plan for each individual. 

• Bipolar I Disorder: The most telling characteristic of bipolar I disorder is the extreme mood swings individuals suffer from. These mood swings include racing thoughts, hyperactivity, and excessive energy. Many individuals also tend to have bouts of depression, where they feel a sense of hopelessness and despair. Often, these episodes can last for days or even weeks.

In more elevated cases of bipolar I disorder, individuals may experience psychotic symptoms, including delusions or hallucinations. To treat bipolar I, options may include a combination of medication and group and individualized therapy. 

• Bipolar II Disorder: With bipolar II disorder, individuals experience many of the same symptoms as bipolar I disorder but also hypomania, a mild form of mania, along with high levels of energy and creativity. Many individuals with bipolar II disorder tend to engage in risk-taking behaviors such as spending money carelessly and engaging in sexual activities they might not normally do.
  
  Bipolar II disorder can also impair social judgment and complicate maintaining a job. Treatment for bipolar II disorder includes medication, therapy, gaining strategies, and understanding how to redirect to positive lifestyle changes.

• Cyclothymic Disorder: This form of bipolar disorder causes individuals to cycle between episodes of hypomania and mild depression. While mood swings are not as severe as those with bipolar I and II disorders, they tend to happen more frequently. Since individuals with cyclothymic disorder have trouble with daily activities, treatment options include therapy and medication.  

Why Bipolar Disorder Treatment is Important

More than two-thirds of people with bipolar disorder have at least one close relative with the illness or unipolar major depression. This means there’s a genetic connection to bipolar disorder. When one generation goes untreated, it can continue through to others.

The risk of death for someone with bipolar disorder is 2.6 times more likely than those without it. As many as one in five individuals with bipolar disorder completes suicide. With bipolar disorder treatment centers that cater to individual needs, this doesn’t have to be the case in Tennessee.

A co-occurring disorder is when an individual simultaneously has a substance use disorder (SUD) and mental health disorder. Unfortunately, nearly 50% of those with bipolar disorder will develop a SUD during their lifetime. Substance abuse is an effort to cope with the symptoms of mental illness. But proper treatment is the only way to get the disorder under control.

Nearly 40% of adults in Tennessee have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder. Addiction and mental health treatment is needed around the state. The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services was established to provide assessment, evaluation, therapeutic intervention, peer support services, and other resources to the state’s residents.

Why Choose TRUE’s Tennessee Mental Health Treatment Center for Bipolar Disorder?

With so many treatment options and facilities, you might wonder why you should choose TRUE Addiction and Behavioral Health for bipolar disorder treatment. The answer is simple: our philosophy on wellness and improving people’s lives.

We are driven by a passion for witnessing people achieve freedom from any affliction that keeps them from living a positive lifestyle of purpose. We provide an environment that creates a supportive healing platform that can transform the brokenhearted into being restored.

Our daily breath is to serve others with a purpose-driven mission to break the chains of the hopeless and establish hope, strength, faith, and love for them to find a connection to having a purpose-filled life.

Our Approach to Bipolar Disorder Treatment

By learning coping skills and understanding how bipolar disorder affects you, you may be able to avoid unnecessary periods of mania and depression.

Typical forms of therapy for bipolar disorder include the following:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective talk therapy for bipolar disorder. It focuses on changing unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns to improve overall functioning and quality of life.
• Family-focused therapy involves including loved ones, such as parents, spouses, and children, in counseling sessions. It helps them understand the condition and teaches communication and symptom management for you and your family.
• Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) combines cognitive-behavioral treatment with skills training in four key areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT helps you accept challenges, change thinking patterns, cope with stress, and improve your interactions with others.

• Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) helps individuals understand unhelpful thoughts that can lead to negative emotions or behaviors. REBT focuses on the moment and what a person is feeling. Our therapists help you form new ways of approaching challenges, thoughts, and circumstances. The root of the adverse emotions is addressed so that self-sabotaging behavior can taper off.
• Individual therapy focuses on each person’s unique needs. This therapeutic approach recognizes specific concerns, and therapists develop specialized goals for each individual. You work collaboratively with a therapist to create a plan that goes beyond the one-size-fits-all model, leading to greater self-awareness for our clients. 

Our Bipolar Disorder Treatment Programs

When considering each person’s treatment plan, we have different levels of care that fit the specific needs of our clients. Because each client is unique and different, each treatment program is as well. This makes us one of the leading mental health treatment centers in Tennessee for bipolar disorder.

Intensive Outpatient Program

Intensive outpatient programs (IOPs) provide a flexible approach to treatment. Our clients are not required to stay overnight because it is not a residential treatment program. Our clients can maintain a daily routine they are used to and address obligations outside of treatment. IOPs require a smaller in-facility commitment. IOP gives our clients the tools to stabilize mood swings, improve their ability to carry out daily functions and manage any other symptoms they experience.

Partial Hospitalization Program

We know that some clients require a more intensive program than IOP can offer. Those clients are guided down a partial hospitalization program (PHP) route. PHP is more personalized, and our clients receive treatment all day. However, this one is also not residential. Individuals return home at night.

Clients can expect intensive treatment, including medication management, as needed, and counseling tailored to their bodies’ response to bipolar disorder. PHP therapists closely watch symptoms for improvements or to make adjustments in an individual’s treatment plan.

PHP allows our clients to establish routines while engaging with a supportive community of peers and healthcare professionals. Research shows that PHP significantly improves symptom management and overall quality of life for individuals with bipolar disorder.

Sober Living

For our clients with co-occurring substance use disorder, a sober living community is an ideal option in this case. We understand the importance of treating both mental health and addiction. This dual diagnosis sometimes requires medication management as part of the treatment plan.

Our sober living homes offer structured housing that provides additional accountability through drug tests and curfews. Sober living is often used in conjunction with PHP and IOP. Sober living homes offer structured accommodations that provide extra accountability through drug tests, curfews, and peer support groups. Sober living is often used with PHP and IOP and makes for an easier transition back to daily life and obligations.

Just like our other programs, sober living has different levels.

• Peer-Run: This format is an informed residence where people who already know each other live together during their recovery. The residents agree on the rules of the house. Some basic requirements might include house meetings, drug screenings, and holding each other accountable during sobriety. This independent format typically does not have clinicians come out to the homes. However, residents continue attending the treatment facility for group therapy.
• Monitored: This option is housed in a single-family home. A resident who has been in the program a while, a senior resident, supervises the house and can act as a house manager. Because of the commitment, this individual is usually compensated for their work. As with peer-run homes, residents can expect to engage in house meetings and drug screenings and follow established house rules.
• Supervised: Our treatment facility has direct involvement in this format. We provide consistent monitoring of the mental health conditions of our clients. Our staff offers any necessary health services and teaches coping skills and other psychotherapy as needed for each individual and group session.
  

To take treatment a step further, we teach life skills and address the importance of having high self-esteem and self-awareness. Every staff member involved in supervised sober living housing is certified.

• Integrated Therapies: This sober living structure is a transitional format for our clients completing their addiction treatment program. As with the supervised model, our therapists come to the homes and provide guidance on life skills and coping skills development.

Get Help Now

If your mental health balance needs repositioning, we can help. Bipolar disorder does not get to decide the course of the rest of your life.  

If you or a family member believes that bipolar disorder hinders you from living your best life, seek help for your symptoms. Our leading Tennessee Mental Health Treatment center for bipolar disorder understands mental health, but we also know what is on the other side of recovery.