Living with BiPolar can be a difficult thing for everyone, once you’ve gotten over the constant mood swings, and the ever changing eating habits, you’ve got the impossible to predict sleeping patterns. These sleeping patterns shall form our topic of conversation today.

Sleep is what gives our body time to re-cooperate and repair itself ready for another day. A typical BiPolar sufferer will get between 15 and 20% less sleep compared to their non-BiPolar counterpart.

Sleeping patterns can be described as anything from erratic to mildly disturbed. However it is extremely rare for a BiPolar sufferer to report their sleeping pattern as “normal”. Most individuals that are diagnosed with some form of BiPolar will get between 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night, occasionally going 1 or more days without sleep, then sleeping for a period of around 18 hours continuously.

This can be increasingly difficult for the parents and carers of a BiPolar sufferer to handle, especially when the sufferer is being encouraged to attend either school or college. Whilst schools and colleges will be quite understanding as to someone who has been officially diagnosed, getting a diagnosis at adolescence  is rare, and the condition is more likely to be put down to an sufferer being a “difficult child/teen”.

For a BiPolar sufferer who is not medicated, it can be significantly worse, for instance sufferers can be known to go for days on end with no sleep, instead spending time intensively engaged in socially excluding activities, typically involving some form of IT. When this spate of sleeplessness rescinds, sufferers can be known to sleep for 2 or 3 days at a time, and upon waking can be found to be very irritable and unapproachable, which is less than ideal when it comes to encouraging the sufferer to engage in either education or training.

In conclusion a BiPolar sufferer does most definitely require specialist treatment in order to establish sleeping patterns that are beneficial not only to the sufferer but to those around the sufferer as well.