Reddit reviews Depression and Bipolar Disorder: Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology, 3rd edition (Essential Psychopharmacology Series)

As it has been said already, nobody really knows the biological causes of psychiatric disorders. To make things a bit complicated, what we think we know cannot be summarized in a comment.

If you are really interested in studying the condition, I find Stahl's psychopharmacology books really easy to follow. Heck, the use them to train residents in psychiatry, so they have to be simple.

I would recommend you either buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Depression-Bipolar-Disorder-Essential-Psychopharmacology/dp/0521714125/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323028038&sr=1-8 or follow this link to a somewhat old version of his "Essentials of psychopharmacology.

The right way to read Stahl's books is to look at the figures for an entire chapter first and then read the text and the figures together.

I hope this helps!

The more I've learned about the psychopharmacology of bipolar treatment, the more comfortable I've become with the drugs. I started Lamotrigine about a month ago, and while my symptoms aren't completely gone, they've improved a lot and I still have a lot more room to titrate up. Also, no side effects, yay! Any changes to my personality have only been positive, I laugh more, I make more jokes, I can go 2 minutes without something pissing me off. My previous understanding of the world hasn't changed much, it's less myopically bleak and my working memory has improved a lot. I'm a great deal more intelligent by all metrics while not depressed. I encourage you to look at the methods of action of the first line treatments for the disorder, the regions of the brain which correspond to your symptoms, and the way which those methods of action are hypothesized to alter brain activity in those regions. This will give you that knowledge though it's dense: http://www.amazon.com/Depression-Bipolar-Disorder-Essential-Psychopharmacology/dp/0521714125 it's a little dated compared to the newest edition and its antipsychotic section isn't as fleshed out, but it'll give you a great neurological understanding of the disorder and its treatment, and it's much shorter.

I think I understand that fear. Without knowing exactly what the drugs would do to me and the cause of the disorder, I wondered if they could invisibly diminish my cognition. Tethering myself to pharmaceuticals for life is also a high price, but a chance at stability, productivity, happiness, and insurance against almost certain death by my own hand(25% for untreated bipolar patients) made it a bargain.