This article is from the WebMD Medical News Archive

Aug. 23, 2004 - Treatment with steroids and antidepressants unmasked Jane Pauley's bipolar disorder, the TV news personality reveals in her new autobiography.

Drug treatments do not cause bipolar disorder, experts tell WebMD. But they can make the symptoms much worse. And this may be the first time people with the disorder find out they have the mental illness.

Fortunately, USA Today reports, Pauley says treatment with lithium keeps her symptoms under control. But in the spring of 2001, Pauley writes, she spent three weeks in a New York psychiatric hospital.

"I mourned 'Janie,' the person I had thought I was - the 'most normal girl on TV' - the girl who never was," Pauley writes in Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue. An excerpt from the book, scheduled for release later this month, is available on the Barnes & Noble web site.

Bipolar disorder is a serious psychiatric disease, once known as manic-depressive disorder. It greatly increases a person's risk of suicide, says Charles Raison, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Atlanta's Emory University.

The illness may begin with either a depression or a manic episode. This may be followed years later by another episode, either of depression or of mania. Left untreated, the interval between these mood swings gets shorter and shorter. A particularly bad sign is called "rapid cycling," in which a person has four or more mood swings in a single year.

"These people become less responsive to treatment and more disabled in their lives," Raison tells WebMD. "One month they are full of energy and making all kinds of unrealistic plans. The next month they can't get out of bed and all their plans are dashed. It is devastating to a person's life. It's more common in women, more common to see what we call 'bipolar II disorder,' characterized by depression and minor manias."

How can such a serious illness go undiagnosed? Raison says that many patients suffer "hypomania" during their manic swings. This may be experienced as irritability or as a euphoric, energetic "high."

Pauley writes that her bipolar diagnosis came a year after treatment for a bad case of hives. Doctors treated her with steroids, often used to relieve the painful swelling and itching of this allergic skin condition.

After her first steroid treatment, Pauley says she was "revved." But a second treatment left her depressed. Treatment with antidepressants threw her into a manic state. At age 50 -- a year after her first treatment for hives -- Pauley was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder.

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