Bipolar Disorder-An extreme sleep disorder?

Bipolar is a mental illness categorized by extreme highs (mania) and lows (depression) in mood regulation. However, could it be a sleep disorder too?

Getting consistent sleep and managing a person’s sleep cycles and sleep health is very important for a person with Bipolar. In fact it can be one of the first signs a person is ticking up toward mania or down toward depression by recognizing how much sleep they are getting. For me 7-9 hrs. is normal, less than 6 hrs. is worrisome towards mania, and greater than 10 hrs. of sleep in a 24 hour day is worrisome towards depression. These warning signs help me to be able to adjust my medicine and work with my doctor prior to extreme measures being need to be taken to get me back even, like admission to a psychiatric hospital. I have been admitted 3 times in over 20 years, but my goal is to be able to manage my illness successfully without ever having to be admitted again. Monitoring my sleep is one way to help me catch my mood slipping up or down and be able to adjust my medicine with my doctor prior to hospitalization.

One thing that is different with my illness is that I have a history of sleep walking in the middle of the night.

Sleepwalking (somnambulism) is not a mental illness itself; it is classified as a parasomnia—a disorder of arousal during deep, non-REM sleep. However, the two are heavily linked: chronic sleepwalking in adults can trigger or exacerbate mental distress, and underlying conditions like major depression, anxiety, PTSD, and OCD are known to increase sleepwalking risk.

Key facts linking sleepwalking and mental health:

• Trigger vs. Symptom: Sleepwalking episodes are often triggered by acute stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, or trauma. While not a direct sign of severe mental illness, sudden onset in adulthood can warrant a clinical evaluation.
• Medication Side Effects: Psychiatric medications, especially certain antidepressants (like SSRIs) and antipsychotics, are common contributors to parasomnias.
• Health Complications: Persistent sleepwalking significantly degrades sleep quality, leading to daytime exhaustion, fatigue, and worsened depressive and anxiety symptoms.

So as you can see sleepwalking is categorized as its own disorder but ia closely associated with mental illness. I think the trauma of my divorce and the separation period leading up to my divorce was too much stress for my body to handle. During this time period, I have been sleepwalking pretty regularly because I just cant shake the stress that is my life with a stressful job and difficult co-parent. Hopefully I can figure out a way to manage stress, so my sleep walking will get better and be more manageable.