Unpacking Bipolar Disorder with Dr. Lori Kumar

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. Side effects don’t usually walk into my office wearing a name tag. They show up as “itchy,” “foggy,” “I’m missing something,” or “everything is on the tip of my tongue,” and if we rush to match those words to a checklist, we can miss the real signal and make the wrong medication decision.  I break down how I translate patient language into clinic...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. One week of conference notes can feel inspiring until you’re back in clinic and a client says, “I’m still depressed.” What changes then? I walk through the question I keep bringing home from PsyCongress: before I add or switch a medication, what exactly am I trying to fix? We get concrete about medication management and “treatment-resistant depre...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. A mood questionnaire says the depression is improving. I see more eye contact, more focus, maybe a little more life in the room. And then the client looks at me and says, “I don’t feel any better.” That moment is where bipolar depression treatment gets real, because symptom scores and lived experience can move on different timelines.  We talk abo...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. Bipolar depression can get worse for reasons that have nothing to do with “the med failing,” and that is exactly why medication decisions can feel so uncertain in real practice. I take you through part two of my bipolar depression series by telling a few cases that changed how I think about treatment response, especially when the picture gets mes...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. “I feel amazing” is usually what we hope to hear after months of depression. With bipolar depression, it can also be the moment we need to slow down and get much more precise about what “better” actually means. We start Part 1 of our Bipolar Depression in Practice series with a deceptively hard clinical question: how do we tell the difference bet...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. We wait for a relapse, a missed stretch of pills, or a hospitalization, and only then the words “long-acting injectable” finally show up. I’m stepping back to ask a cleaner question for bipolar I disorder care: what needs to be true before an LAI earns a place in the conversation, not as a last resort, but as a thoughtfully explained option in ma...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. A patient says, “I hate needles,” and the room tightens. Do we hear a hard no, a fear we can work with, or a past experience that needs words before it needs a plan? We get real about long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAIs) and what the conversation actually sounds like in everyday psychiatric care when I’m excited about an option and my cli...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. A long-acting injectable antipsychotic can do more than solve “Did you take your meds?” It can change the entire way we interpret progress, setbacks, and what “medication failure” actually means. I’m starting a three-part series on LAIs in real practice because I’ve watched injectables open doors for clients who were stuck in cycles of relapse, h...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. A new psychiatric medication gets approved, social media starts buzzing, and suddenly the question lands in the exam room: “Should I take this?” We want to slow that moment down. A headline about a new mechanism of action is interesting, but it does not answer the real clinical question: where does this treatment fit for the person sitting right...

Want to continue the discussion? Send me a message. Psychosis can be terrifying, urgent, and unmistakable and it can still be misdiagnosed if we treat a symptom like a final answer. We walk through a clinical truth with huge consequences for assessment and documentation: psychosis is a symptom, not a diagnosis. When “schizophrenia” shows up in the chart too early, it can steer future clinicians, s...

Hi I am your host Dr. Lori Kumar. I am a doctoral-prepared, board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner.  Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder get talked about constantly, yet many patients and families walk away feeling more confused and more alone. We made this show to slow the conversation down and rebuild it with clarity, nuance, and respect. I share why person-centered psychiat...