Bipolar I Disorder Case Study Essay

The following is a case study of a female client, Elizabeth a 34 year old female. She used to be employed as a bookkeeper for a restaurant, but now is a waitress, and only until recently she had never been in trouble with the law. The patient was married for four years and at the time was trying to have kids. Now though they are getting divorced due to her mental health and her unfaithfulness to her husband
From the information given about the patient, the diagnosis for the patient is Bipolar I disorder. The client has experienced both manic episodes and major depressive episodes. The anecdote given shows at first that Elizabeth’s trip to Las Vegas was her suffering from a manic episode. While in Vegas she showed signs of an inflated self-esteem …show more content…
Statistically the odds at winning at a casino are astronomically small, and then betting money that wasn’t hers, the only possible outcome to this situation is a painful one. Elizabeth also noted that she felt highly energized, her mouth could not keep up with her thoughts and her ideas came so fast she bounced from one to the next. Her symptoms represent those of being more talkative than usually and flight of ideas. Her high energy also affected her sleep, to which she said when in these episodes she could go days without sleep, which again lack of sleep is another symptom of manic episodes. Signs of distractibility were also evident by her noticing a blinking light on a smoke detector and assuming it was a camera and that she was being watched. She then goes off on other things to support the fact that her co-workers were spying on her, such as her lunch being moved and her key card stopped working. All of these were clearly irrelevant to anything yet she was able to conclude she was being watched, even though she clearly wasn’t. Finally her sexual encounter with a stranger in Las Vegas was also a sign of excessive involvement in activities