UpDownAround, you make a good point that post diagnosis (post start of treatment) can change the ratio a bit for some. At least it has for me over time.

I have bipolar type 1. For the years before my diagnosis, I can only guess how much time I spent hypomanic. I really lacked some insight to the hypomania back then. I can clearly point to depressions and full blown manias, though. When trying to add up time hypomanic I really have to think about my behavior, including tendencies to have anger outbursts, tendency to self-medicate with alcohol more than other times, times with particularly amazing productivity, bravery, impulsivity, and grandiosity. Obviously there was plenty of time when I was more in the "normal" range, and yet felt like myself and did well. Actually, I felt a lot of the "bad behavior" I now identify, was just me.

So...though I can't come up with any firm numbers, I will say that, pre-diagnosis, I believe my time in hypomania plus mania (hypomania, especially) probably exceeded my time in depression, at least by a bit. If I compare depression to full blown mania, then I'd say that depression time outnumbered my full blown mania time at least 3:1 or maybe even 5:1, as a guess.

In my early years after diagnosis and treatment, my moods were VERY unstable. Despite medications I became manic, a lot. Especially manic with mixed features. I think that the majority of 3 years (1 leading up to and 2 following medications) I was often manic. I had about 7 manic hospitalizations in those two years, and spent most of that time after them in Intensive Outpatient Programs not quite stable. Then I fell into a 1.5 year period of mostly depression where I had 3 hospitalizations and was home on disability for almost a full year depressed. After I came out of the depression I was very often hypomanic for a couple of years. My psychiatrist even told me he thought hypomania was my "baseline". That surprised me and made me question all of the years before that I thought such moods were "normal".

After that couple of years often hypomanic I felt between mildly sub-baseline to moderately depressed. That lasted for about 5 years. Then I felt mostly stable, but with other issues like anxiety, phobias, and some dissociation. For the last couple of years I've been mostly stable, with only a few short depressions of 4-6 weeks each. I have barely even felt hypomanic during these last 2 years.

So though I still think my time hypomanic/manic outnumbered time depressed (unless you zero out mixed episodes) in my very early years of bipolar treatment, my time depressed started to really outnumber my time hypomanic/manic during these last 7 years, though true stable time grew significantly. Why? I think part of the reason is because I finally quit drinking alcohol. Another reason is because I was put on a seriously large sedating cocktail that curbed my hypomania/mania.