Despite the research on gender difference in bipolar disorders, female bipolar disorder sufferers aren't always able to get help that reflects their specific experience. Some women aren't even able to get diagnosed with a bipolar disorder, period — because female sufferers experience more depressive episodes than men, and often get misdiagnosed as purely depressive. Emma, 32, who was diagnosed with unipolar depression in high school, was completely unprepared when she did begin exhibiting manic symptoms in the last semester of college. "Therapists and doctors would always ask me if I'd had a manic episode and the answer was always no," she tells Bustle.

"I didn't know what it was at first," she continues. "I thought I was just full of energy and was enjoying it. Then it tipped over into scary territory. I'd get packages from eBay that I didn't remember buying (like a fur coat and white go-go boots). I'd raise my hand to answer a question in class and then would lose my train of thought while talking. I was in the computer lab after class one day and my hands wouldn't stop shaking." She went to hospital and was diagnosed with bipolar II "almost immediately."

And even when women are able to get correctly diagnosed, their providers don't always tell them that the disorder often manifests differently for women. Emma tells Bustle that her doctor "hasn't said anything to me about gender differences," despite being in treatment for years. Melanie, a Ph.D. student with a new baby, who was diagnosed with bipolar I in 2007, concurs.

"The only thing a psychiatrist has mentioned (aside from pregnancy-related advice)," she says, "is that part of the menstrual cycle can exacerbate mood symptoms. So like three days before my period starts, I get really angry."

The impacts of pregnancy on female bipolar disorder sufferers are particularly crucial to understand, because being postpartum can severely exacerbate the condition. Suzanne, who wasn't properly diagnosed until her 50s, tells Bustle that not having this information as a young woman wreaked havoc on her life. "In my 20s, as a new wife and mother, I had uncontrollable rages followed by bouts of severe depression, rinse and repeat," says Suzanne. "This is what ultimately destroyed my marriage to a good man, something I grieve for to this day."

Being diagnosed before pregnancy helps — but it doesn't solve every problem. When Melanie became pregnant, she was given some guidance about how to manage her disorder throughout pregnancy and childbirth, including how to properly medicate, plan for "breakthrough symptoms," and manage her baby's feeding schedule so that her husband and mother-in-law could help. Still, she says, despite having that knowledge, "I feel like being pregnant made me double bipolar. There was so much crying."