My job (occupational therapist, I worked with patients with dementias and severe psychiatric disorders most of my career, regular nursing homes and home health the rest) was so stressful that it caused a lot of cycling and made it very hard to handle my bipolar. But I had symptoms before I ever saw a patient. They did get around the early times of working with patients (my 6 months of full-time clinicals and first 2 years working) but realistically that started about 3 months before clinicals when I kept telling my friend I felt "weird, something is wrong, I don't like feeling this way, etc".

There are episodes that were the direct result of work, one of which put me on disability. But even that one had a lot going on that wasn't work related (I had lithium toxicity and it took 6 months to get a blood level that wasn't falsely low because I was vomiting all the time from toxicity plus stomach ulcers). At first this was the toxicity and the sterss of my therapist leaving with almost no notice. And then it was work entirely. They'd had a position for a 2nd assistant for me posted for months but there's an OT shortage and it was taking a long time to hire someone, just when my sole assistant became very erratic. I knew they were going to fire her but were trying to wait until they had someone to help me. Eventually I caught her forging her timesheet and that was the end of her. So I suddenly was doing really 3 people's jobs and working enormous hours per week even if I weren't bipolar plus commuting a long way every day and then I couldn't keep up so I started working 6 days per week to help manage and I told them I couldn't do it for long. Then I told them I had about reached the end of my ability to cope, that I had paperwork stacked sky high plus all the stress and work hours and they didn't listen. So I wound up on disability for 4 months to get meds re-adjusted and to do some intense therapy.

My therapist informs me that I pushed as hard as I possibly could and used mania to work. So the stressful job did not help at all but it was my handling of the bipolar that was to blame. (I did things like cut back to 32hours but then was expected to keep up with the 40 hr/week PT and was disciplined when i couldn't do that but I never stood up for myself). I was fired twice and then my last 2 jobs were ideal for me. Which is good because I left knowing I was good at my job. I had known that in the years I worked in psych but the last 6 months of that job were so depressing and I felt taken advantage of so badly that it just wasn't good for me at all. I came back from disability and resigned a few weeks later.