Gary Lau, Medical Officer

How often do you see anxiety, irritability and agitation in your bipolar I patients?

These are some of the main symptoms in bipolar I patients that we see in our daily practice. A lot of bipolar I patients have these different kinds of symptomatology

How do you think the addition of depressive symptoms during a manic episode impacts on the burden of the disorder for your patients?

Depressive symptoms during a manic episode can hugely affect the patient’s subjective feelings. On one hand we need to give them medication to treat the manic symptoms. On the other hand, as we know, those medications are not always helpful for their depressive symptoms, so we have to find a new way to treat their depressive symptoms.

How do you help a bipolar I patient to explain how they are feeling to you?

They usually come to tell us they have difficulty getting along with their relatives, or even strangers in the street. More often than not, they will have verbal conflicts or even physical struggles with people that they have never met before.

And when you’re talking to them do you ask them specific questions to find out about that?

We give them time to express themselves. They will usually talk about their distress which comes from their symptoms.