Bipolar IN Order
Bipolar IN Order is a self-management program for bipolar disorder. Bipolar IN Order helps people notice their states earlier, understand how their environment shapes them, and take ownership of their behaviors — including which tools to use and when. People respond before things escalate — the result is fewer crises, better day-to-day functioning, and real ownership of behavior.
Learn How It Works
The Approach
Bipolar IN Order treats mania and depression as states to be understood and navigated. Users build personalized profiles of their environments, behaviors, comfort zones, and tools — creating a self-management system specific to them. The program works alongside clinical care, not as a replacement for medication or therapy.
Almost everything in the program is paired. Mania and depression have separate tool selections, environment ratings, timeline settings, and comfort zone thresholds. This reflects that bipolar symptoms are directional — what helps during depression may not help during mania, and vice versa.
"Your insight is brilliant, the way you have come to see your condition as an advantage, as a gift, and as something that is valid and meaningful. Please keep up the good work, helping people turn their illness into a "condition," as you have."
— Michael Sands, M.D., MPH, Assistant Chief, Department of Psychiatry, Kaiser Permanente Hayward
What's in the Program
Structured Education
Self-paced video lessons that build awareness step by step. Features unlock as users progress through the program's lessons — starting with daily check-ins, then opening up tools, reports, and the timeline system. This keeps the experience from being overwhelming early on and ensures users understand each feature before they get access to it.
Daily Check-ins
A daily check-in takes about 30 seconds and captures where the user is right now — mania, depression, what's going on around them, and how they're handling it. Over time that builds a detailed personal dataset that drives the AI coaching, reports, and pattern recognition. When they use a tool, the program tracks what worked and in what context. Monthly surveys capture healthcare utilization — hospitalizations, ER visits, medication changes — which feed the cost savings analysis.
Graduated Timelines
When a user's check-in data shows they're moving outside their comfort zone, the program starts a timeline — a graduated sequence of responses that begins with simple awareness and progresses through stronger tools only if things continue to escalate. Each mood direction runs its own independent timeline, and the user controls how many days at each phase before it advances.
AI Coaching
The AI coach appears throughout the app — in lessons, exercises, tools, and reports. It provides conversational coaching by asking targeted questions based on the user's data, helping users develop self-awareness and recognize patterns. It is explicitly not a therapist and does not provide therapeutic advice.
Reports You Can Share
The app generates reports that show users how they're doing over time — mood trends, which tools are working, behavioral patterns, and AI-generated insights. Users see their own data. Partners see aggregate outcomes across their cohort — engagement, cost savings, tool effectiveness — but never individual check-in data or conversations.
You Control Who Sees What
Users can share their check-in data, tool usage, AI coaching conversations, and reports with therapists, doctors, family, or researchers — choosing exactly what each person can and cannot see. A therapist might get the clinical report and tools data. A spouse might see only the weekly summary. The user decides, and can revoke access at any time. All access is logged for HIPAA compliance.
What People Are Saying
"I've learned that small steps may be taken to achieve almost any goal. We don't need change to happen all at once."
— Susan M.
20 Years of Development
Bipolar IN Order has been in continuous development since 2003. What started as in-person workshops has been refined through thousands of interactions into a fully digital, standardized program. It has been studied at Tufts University, reviewed by PCORI, and endorsed by researchers at institutions including Yale, UC Berkeley, Maastricht University, and the University of Barcelona.
Hundreds of people have paid for this program out of pocket since 2007. It works. We're now ready to prove it at scale.
See the Evidence