How Family Therapy Can Help You Support a Loved One with Bipolar Disorder

When your loved one is in a manic or depressive phase, it’s understandable that you’d be affected by it. Don’t shame yourself for feeling drawn into their high and lows—that’s a normal response, and, like their changing moods, it’s often not something you can control. But you can be prepared for those highs and lows, and that’s crucial, because mounting research shows that how family members respond to their loved one’s manic and depressive episodes can affect their recovery timeline. To prevent relapses and minimize the severity of each episode, you’ll need a solid set of skills that you can use to support them—as well as ways that you can support yourself.

There are an infinite number of variables that govern a family’s dynamic. That’s why it’s important to go through therapy with a trained professional who understands families and Bipolar Disorder: because each family member has the potential to impact the way your loved one responds to a particular episode. It’s important that everyone be involved in understanding the disorder (even young siblings), so you’ll all attend each session together. The brunt of your work will be divided into three components: learning how to identify the signs and symptoms of relapse, developing strategies for supporting your loved one through manic or depressive episodes, and learning how to help them stay on a healthy medication regimen.

Those are the skills you’ll need to truly understand the disorder—your toolbox, in a sense—but what you’re building with them is an environment in which your loved one feels supported, empowered, and understood. That’s what really makes an impact on recovery: people who come down from an episode in a home where there are “high levels of criticism, hostility, and/or emotional overinvolvement from a caregiving relative…are two to three times more likely to relapse in the subsequent 9 months” than those who don’t. As trouble as the statistic is, it makes a lot of common sense. People do best when they’re loved and valued—regardless of whether or not they live with Bipolar Disorder.

Even for adults, loving someone who lives with Bipolar Disorder can be a confusing and emotionally draining experience. Now imagine being a child trying to understand why their mother, father, or sibling goes from such high highs to such low lows, unable to comprehend why it’s happening and unaware of the way that the illness is affecting them. They very likely know that something is wrong, but they may not know how to express that feeling, or how the illness affects them directly. Family therapy can help them work through both of those things in a setting in which their parents are likely doing the same. This is especially important for an illness like Bipolar Disorder, given how much of an impact the emotional responses of family members have on the recovery process. Involving children in family therapy is a great way to help them understand how they can play a role in their loved one’s recovery, and can be an excellent resource for teaching them coping strategies that they can use to support themselves.