Psychiatric doctor explains how one driving habit can be a sign of bipolar disorder

It’s estimated that about 1.3 million people in the UK have bipolar, making it one of the most common long-term conditions.

But it may often go undiagnosed or unnoticed for a while. The NHS describes bipolar disorder as a mental health condition that affects your moods which can swing from one extreme to another.

And perhaps you’ve found yourself worried about your mate, picking up on recent changes in their behaviour. It could be that you’ve noticed a specific thing they’ve started doing while driving, and a psychiatric doctor says this can be a sign of a problem.

Dr Agam Dhawan shares information and advice on TikTok and he listed what he believes are three ‘early warning signs of bipolar disorder’, with one occurring when a person is behind the wheel of a car.

His first one on the list is ‘not sleeping’.

He explains: “We see their sleep gradually go from let’s say eight-seven hours to like three hours or four hours.”

The doctor describes how they can go many nights like this as they ‘don’t feel like they need sleep’. Instead, the person feels ‘energised’ and ‘absolutely fine’.

His second warning sign is the person starting to talk ‘really fast’.

Dr Dhawan describes that a person with bipolar can often have ‘a rapid series of thoughts’.

“Their thoughts are racing, they’re thinking a lot quicker and they’re talking a lot quicker too,” he says. “We call this pressured speech, or flight of ideas.”

You might find it difficult to interrupt this because the person just wants to ‘keep talking and talking’.

And the third one is when cars can come in to play as Dr Dhawan says a key sign is that the person can be ‘impulsive’ and do ‘risky things’ they might not normally do.

As well as the likes of going on ‘shopping sprees’ or sleeping with random people, this includes: “They start driving really fast.”

The doctor went on to describe a patient who ‘started getting manic’ and it was spotted due to her driving.

“She was working as an EMS driver and she was taking a lot more shifts, doing more night shifts and driving really fast,” he says.

“The reason they found out was because she was driving so fast - her partner made her stop driving.”

The patient was then apparently taken to hospital where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Dr Dhawan advises that if you’ve seen this in yourself or someone else to ‘make sure to get psychiatric help’.