Understanding Bipolar Disorder

At home in Ireland, Sinéad says her four kids—Jake, Róisín, Shane and Yeshua—keep her going. "I'd be a headless chicken without the kids, yeah, definitely," she says. "They create a routine."

On a wall in her kitchen, Sinéad wrote a note to herself: It doesn't matter if it's not perfect! "I was worried about making sure when I went away that all the childcare was all arranged and perfect, perfect, perfect," she says. "But I have to remind myself it doesn't matter if things aren't perfect."

When the medications were prescribed to her, Sinéad says she was scared to take them at first. "But I said, 'I've got nothing to lose,'" and, she says, she took them for the first time. "It was brilliant because I felt this huge hole. And when I took the meds, within half an hour, it was literally like I felt concrete coming in to fill the hole."

Sinéad says she used to feel suicidal but medication has given her a new outlook on life. "Everything just became too much, and the best way I can describe it to you is you're so sad, just terribly sad, that you're like a bucket of water with holes in it. Every pore of you is crying and you don't even understand why or what," Sinéad says. "I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds and having a chance to, you know, build a life."