Unit 4 – Case study

I want to share something a little different for this unit’s case study.

This is a clinical teaching role-play — an unscripted CBT-style session exploring mood fluctuations associated with bipolar disorder. The clinician is a qualified Clinical Psychologist; Tom is played by an actor, Sam Newton. It moves faster than a typical session and doesn’t cover everything a full CBT session normally would, so it’s not meant as a perfect textbook example — but as an unscripted exchange, it gives you a genuinely honest sense of how a clinician actually gathers information toward a psychological formulation.

You’ll recognise a lot of what you read in “Bipolar Spectrum Disorders” showing up here directly — the racing thoughts, the dwindling sleep, the grandiosity, the impulsive spending, the sense of having finally become who he was “meant to be.” What struck me most is something we touched on earlier in this unit: how good mania can feel from the inside, even as it does real damage to the people around the person experiencing it. Listen for that tension as it unfolds.

A brief content note: this session includes discussion of substance use, financial harm, and infidelity during the episode described. Approach it with that in mind.

Filmed and produced by Leeds Trinity University. This video received a top video award from Healthline.com in 2015.