Can bipolar disorder cause delusions?

Q:  Can the Bipolar patient also experience delusional behavior, such as believing that she is a famous Rabbi reincarnated, or that she is beginning a revolution and if anybody gets in her way she will kill them, or that she will give birth to the supreme being on the "Sabbath", or can this be some other type of sickness?

Dear Russell --
Unfortunately yes: "delusions", such as you describe, are a common (about 50% of the time in episodes of mania for a patient with bipolar I) symptom of bipolar disorder.

Dr. Phelps


Published March, 2001