Could my friend have Bipolar Disorder? He sees things and has weird mood swings!?

He says that he sees shadowy figures standing around that resemble real people. However, once he gets the chance to notice them, they disappear. It sounds very scary. He also has weird mood swings. One moment he is happy, then the nex he is angry or sad. Just today, he said that he almost fainted when he said that he was welcomed by a formidable shadow person when he opened a cubboard door, but it then faded away. He got freaked out and then ran down the staircase, just to find a shadowy hand reaching out of a nearby door, and then disappearing. I think that he is going crazy, and may have Bipolar Disorder. If he does have it, it would add another disorder to his list. He already has a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Can anybody help him?

For the other symptoms, click on my name, and you should see my profile. Then scroll down and view my questions, and you can read all of my questions. Everything that I post is about this person. You see, if you guys were to see other 'symptoms', then maybe you could give more accurate answers. Help!

This sounds far more like schizophrenia to me than bi-polar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by manic episodes that result in a person being hypervigilent, not needing sleep, exhibiting dangerous or risky behavior, inflated self-esteem, flights of idea or thoughts, and becoming very chatty to the point speech is forced. They will highly seek pleasurable activities, may stay up all night cleaning their entire house. These mood swings occur over the course of days, not minute-to-minute. You will also often see periods of major depression set in between these manic episodes, though this is not required. You can have hallucinations associated with bipolar disease, but I'm not seeing you describing mania here.

In schizophrenia, you tend to experience hallucinations--sometimes visual, though more commonly auditory. These are often threatening experiences and may encourage your friend to harm himself or others. If he is hearing voices to harm someone, he should go to the hospital immediately. He may also become disorganized and dissheveled. Or may experience delusions that he is being persecuted.

You mentioned your friend having the shakes in another post. There is a type of schizophrenia known as catatonic schizophrenia that is characterized by unnecessary and excessive voluntary movements, purposeless motor activity, saying crude words or making crude gestures, or even motor immobility. Not all of these need be present, obviously, though they could describe what he is experiencing.

This could also be a drug issue, especially if this just came on all of a sudden and stopped within a few hours.

What this comes down to is that your friend needs to see a psychiatrist. There are some definite psychiatric issues at hand.

Yes, it is quite possible he has bipolar disorder. However, it would take a mental health professional to make a definite diagnosis. If he is already being treated for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and is seeing "shadowy figures," this is something he should bring up with whoever is treating him for the OCD.

Yup totally crazy

sounds like he has schizoaffective disorder which would explain the mood swings and the delusions. take him to the doctor

I would take him to hospital, before he hurts himself or others

Well I don't think he's bipolar. I have bipolar disorder and I have never had any sort of delusions. It sounds like your friend seriously needs to seek professional help. It sounds like he may have some form of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is not what most people think it is so don't put that out of your head. I'm actually a psych major so I know enough about this kind of stuff. I am leaving you with a couple of links to check out but do some more research. But definitely have your friend get looked at by a doctor there are plenty of medications that can fix these kinds of things but he does need help before it gets worse.