What do you do when you work with someone who is bipolar?!

What do you do when you work with someone who is bipolar?

My real-estate agent is bipolar...grrrrr. What a pain in the a*s it was to work with him! I'm glad my house is bought and I don't have to deal with that anymore.

I guess just take it all with a grain of salt, the ups and downs. They'll seem super-nice and friendly and energetic...until they're moping around, barely able to function. If you can find a pattern at all (keep a calendar or something, discreetly!) then try to schedule creative stuff for the up times and busywork for the down times. Manic depressive people really can get a whole lot done in the manic phases, and they can be super-creative and a lot of fun until they crash. Take advantage of the good times and try to remind yourself that it's not personal when they're down.

But if you give them any special responsibility, try to time it so it'll get done while they're manic--they might feel guilty if they still have work to do when they get depressed.

And as far as the person getting treatment...good luck while you're waiting. It might be a while. Manic-depressive people often resist treatment because it's super-fun while they're manic (for them, anyway) but then it's super-lousy when all the bills come in from their shopping sprees and they sober up and they get depressed again. Then, they're too unmotivated to go in for help, so they're super-resistant to getting help during either phase.

Hopefully, they'll get a "normal" phase at some point in which they take stock of their situation and get some help. But it can be a long time coming, so you'll have to deal with it like they'll never get help, because they may not.

My grandpa was manic-depressive, and holy sh!t was he tough to deal with when he was manic. When he was depressive, he was just...gone. You wouldn't hear from him unless he went back to a middle state or back to full-blown mania. What a pain in the a*s. I loved him, but damn, his disease wasn't good for any of us. Sometimes mania isn't even fun or all that productive, not in any helpful way.

Learn to extricate yourself from the situation, and if you wind up taking on extra responsibilities, keep track of them. If the manic-depressive person really isn't pulling his/her weight, it might be a good way to convince him/her to seek treatment. Let a supervisor know if the person's performance is really suffering.

Good luck with that--it's a b!tch of a disease and it's tough to deal with. Don't let it affect you too much--no sense having TWO mentally ill people!