They were longer, as in months. I sought treatment due to depression and an inability to sleep, then being put on an anti-depressant (which threw me into mania). It was six months after giving birth to my daughter, and a bad post-partum depression that triggered the incident that led to a diagnosis, and I was 32 years old -- even though I think I should have been diagnosed ten years earlier.

How long did it take to completely re-stabilize? Honey, there is no such thing. Bipolar is a balancing act. First thing you do is find a good mood stabilizer and then you spend the rest of your life tweaking your medications and understanding yourself in therapy -- if you do things right. But I think you really want to know is how long does it take to get functional again, and THAT varies on how quickly you can find a medication combo you can tolerate. For me, I was out of the hospital and caring for my daughter eight days later and stable enough to do that at that time, but bipolar-stable and able to go back to work took a couple of years.