How A Patient with Bipolar Affective Disorder, the Family, Careers, and Significant Others Are Impacted By the Diseases

Bipolar affective disorder involves an extreme change of moods in a person that affects not only the person but also their families, friends, and significant others (Yuen, et al., 2019). To an individual, hypomania flexes that involve high energies affect the patient in different ways, such as giving them agitation, increased sense of confidence and well-being, and racing thoughts on various issues, such as getting distracted easily. Uninformed decisions can cause more problems amid their conditions (Yuen et al., 2019). On the contrary, the depressive side of bipolar affects an individual’s energy in matters of appetite, feeling sad and empty over time, lacking sleep or sleeping too much over nothing, decreased reasoning capability, lost appetite, weight gain or loss, or even on worse situations, attempting suicide or having suicidal thoughts (Yuen, et al., 2019).

Family, carers, and significant others are majorly involved in caring for bipolar patients to ensure stability in their lives. These people need to find an effective way to cope with these people and, at the same time, get stable conditions for these patients to get better (Sandhya et al., 2022). A family is a basic unit that supports society and needs to be protected by all means. A person suffering from bipolar affects families in different ways, such as affecting the daily routines to accommodate that person and unusual behaviour from that person that needs to be adapted even if not healthy for the other family members (Sandya, et al., 2022). There is also the financial strain due to treatment processes undertaken on several instances for the patient in areas such as medication and caregivers and pressure in the family (Sandya, et al., 2022). Also, families might struggle to manage relationships around society because of the condition, which causes stress to other family members. Some family members might not be able to work their way around those stresses and thus drive situations that might be hard to overcome even in the future (Yuen, et al., 2019).

Carers must understand their role in the patient’s journey, their families, and society to a more considerable extent. These people must understand the patients’ real situations and conditions to foster control for the patient, the family, and themselves (Fitriani & Suryadi, 2019). They need to get educated on the several bipolar disorders to understand the remedies they need to apply. It is difficult to practice love and care, especially when some situations do not make sense. Still, they must get trained, which is a role they must play (Fitriani & Suryadi, 2019). At times, carers and significant others might feel that the pressure is too much and they need to give up, but with proper training, accommodating these people will not be such a huge task as well as their recovery (Fitriani & Suryadi, 2019). The collaboration of families, carers, and significant others make bipolar disorder management easier to manage. As long as every player understands what is expected of them, it becomes a condition we can all tolerate (Fitriani & Suryadi, 2019). Carers and significant others can negatively impact the lives of patients with bipolar, especially if they do not understand their role in stress and accommodation. Carers and significant others are the actual determinants of a patient’s curve. If they are warm, the situation gets more hospitable for the patient, but when they are cold, the situation gets even frozen (Fitriani & Suryadi, 2019).

Sometimes families and other caregivers may feel guilty for contributing to bipolar affective disorder, even reject the person or the patient, and get annoyed that the illness is ruining their everyday life. In other words, the subjective burdens linked to bipolar affective disorder can lead to affective symptoms (Yuen, et al., 2019). Studies have shown caregivers are more impacted when the individual or the patient develops depressive symptoms compared to manic symptoms. However, the caregiving content differs from the family burden (Yuen, et al., 2019). Caregiving entails offering actual help to manage the illness. The experience can have either negative or positive elements accompanying the background. On the other hand, the family burden is an emotional experience; mostly negatively linked to the illness of the loved one, but personnel may not be directly involved in providing practical help (Yuen, et al., 2019).