Question on Bipolar and Ritalin?

Question by Robbie Young: Question on bipolar and ritalin?
I have been diagnosed with social anxiety and bipolar disorder. I took sodium valporate (depakote), lamictal, clonazepam, lithium, carbazapine, and tripetal. The clonazepam worked for my social anxiety and the lithium helped me with depression. Neither helped me when I felt worked up or “manic” so they called it. I was getting getting fed up and told my doc how out of it I felt and he put me on ritalin 10mg 3 times a day. It worked amazing for me. First time I could sit and have a chat with family without wanting to get up or fidgeting. I am much calmer and chill when I’m on my ritalin and my social anxiety is getting better too. Ritalin really calms me down and my doc was a bit skeptical at first and thought it was mania or hypomania. But we stuck with it and increased to 60mg a day. I’ve been on ritalin for the past 4 years and haven’t felt manic at all since starting. Now I have a new doc and I explained the situation and he said I didnt have bipolar and the ritalin worked because I was adhd and wants me to stop the lithium. Now I took the lithium for a while before the ritalin and it didn’t do much but helped my mood a bit. Should I follow his advice?

Best answer:

Answer by gardensallday
when you were “manic” did your sleep needs decrease dramatically? Like you needed only say 2 hours of sleep a night, for weeks on end? Or if hypomanic, maybe needed only 4 or 5 hours, but normally you need 8 hours? Then that was mania for sure. If not, then you were probably misdiagnosed, which is VERY common -the first diagnosis is right only 1/3 of the time in psychiatry, I’ve read.

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