One tecnique doctors and psychiatrists recommend patients to use to help cope with bipolar disorder is mood charting. Mood charting is a way for both doctors and the patient see what things or situations in their day-to-day lifestyle spikes their symptoms and what treatments would be most effective. The patient uses this chart by rating their stability from sever-normal and their irritability and anxiety from 0-3 (0 being none and 3 being severe). The chart also keeps track of the hours of sleep the patient gets everynight and their weight once a month. These are important to track because of the fact that even though it is a mental disease, bipolar disorder affects other systems in the body, and two things that it causes is sleep loss and loss of appetite.
Here is a link to a blank sample mood chart: http://www.healthyplace.com/images/stories/bipolar/hp-mood_chart_blank.pdf