How to help a cousin/friend with bi-polar disorder/manic depression

[Tobin S.]

9. This part:

"Basically, they will not get help until they want it. Your rationality is not theirs and they will never accept anything but their own. This is why everyone else is crazy, not them. They believe in their own mind no matter what."

is not true for everyone with bipolar disorder. What you are experiencing with your friend is called "lack of insight" and it affects about 30% of people who have any mental illness. Simply put, they don't know that they are sick when they are experiencing some of their symptoms. Hypomania is very deceptive because it makes you think that you are well. But hypomania usually is not dangerous. What's dangerous is what comes after it. For a bipolar person hypomania is a temporary state as they slide along the spectrum from clinically depressed to full blown mania- for bipolar 1 people anyway which is what I have.