My depressions have varied in length, the worst was the one that resulted in my bipolar diagnosis 10 years ago, I had a breakdown after months of undiagnosed mania and the depression lasted 7 months despite medications and therapy. In the ensuing years, I would have a twice yearly episode (episodes?), where I would climb into mania, slide down into dysphoric mania, then suddenly drop into severe depression, this took usually a matter of 4-6 weeks and then another month or so afterwards with intense treatment/med changes to come back up from the depression. It was really hard to live with this. I think one year I had about 4 months total of stability.

What I found to be helpful is to call my dr as soon as I realize things are going wrong (hard to do sometimes when you first go manic, I'm not very obvious when I am manic until my T talks to me for about 10 minutes)..between my T and my Pdoc I was able to stay out of the hospital in 2013, that was the last time I had severe episodes. That year, during the episode, I would see my T twice a week and my Pdoc once a week, along with med changes and this got me back to stability in a more timely manner. Never easy though, I have been through so many med changes that are dependent on what part of an episode I am in.