Bipolar

At Las Vegas Psychiatry, every consideration will be taken into account when assessing for Bipolar disorder in order to meet the criteria. Many times patients may be labeled as a “Bipolar” when in fact they suffer from something else such as:

• Personality disorders (borderline or histrionic)
• Intermittent Explosive disorder (“anger disorder”)
• Traumatic brain injury
• Thyroid imbalance

For treatment, medications from either of the 2 broad classes of mood stabilizers will be utilized with considerations made based on:

• Side effects
• Metabolic changes
• Desire to lose weight
• History of Migraines/Seizures

During the evaluation, we will look at history of mania or the often missed hypomania,  treatment trials, and factor in “treatment resistant depression” as possible clues that a bipolar disorder is present. In many cases, we will defer to the newest dopamine modifying medications such as those advertised on television like Caplyta or Vraylar. Additionally medication levels can be checked in order to prudently select the right and monitor organ systems.

Our #1 goal at Las Vegas Psychiatry is to keep our patients stable so that they never require being seen by police, ER & inpatient psychiatric services.