Mental health researchers in Melbourne have come up with what they are calling a pioneering program to help people who have bipolar disorder.

The researchers have developed a behavioural treatment for the devastating disorder, which is linked to a high percentage of suicides in Australia.

The team, led by the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria (MHRIV), says the new treatment has halved the number of relapses suffered by the program's participants.

Bipolar disorder is characterised by swings from depressive to manic moods.

Tania Lewis was an aspiring detective with the Victoria Police when the pressure of her job saw her show the first signs.

"I started working longer hours and taking on more work and not going home when I should, and without realising I wasn't sleeping as much as I should have, and I wasn't eating properly," she said.

"And one day I woke up and I knew I couldn't go to work that day, and I didn't know what was wrong, but I just knew that I couldn't go to work."

Groundbreaking program

For more than 20 years, Ms Lewis has battled to control her bipolar disorder.

"For me, when I become manic, I become psychotic, which means I lose touch with reality and I become delusional," she said.

"And those delusions can be anything from believing that something is happening - like the night I escaped from hospital I thought there was a bug in my room and that ASIO were after me, so I was running away from this perceived threat - to other times when I've actually thought that I was God and that I had control over what was going on around me."

Ms Lewis is one of the Victorians to have benefited from the groundbreaking program developed by Melbourne mental health researchers.

St Vincent's Hospital's chair of psychiatry, Professor David Castle, says it is the first course in the world to halve participants' depressive episodes and cut manic relapses completely.

The key to the program is recognising the early warning signs.

"One of the cardinal early warning signs is sleep disturbance," he said.

"People find that they have so much energy and so much to do that they don't need to sleep, and they also become then often grandiose, become very irritable, sometimes will stop eating because they just don't feel the need to eat or don't have the time to eat."

Once those signs are picked up, Professor Castle says medication may be increased and a reduction in stress is crucial.

"It might also involve more specific things like asking your partner to look after the pets or something like that - things which might seem trivial, but which are added cumulative stresses," he said.

Course 'life-changing'

Ms Lewis says the course has changed her life.

"Even decisions about socialising - I might think I've had a busy week so I won't go out to that thing on Friday night because I'll be tired. So I'll have a quiet night," she said.

"The average person may or may not do that, but I do make those decisions consciously all the time.

"[I've] had a lot of what people would consider to be stresses for anyone ... and I haven't become unwell, or haven't had an episode of mania, which is extraordinary."

The MHRIV led the research and development of the program, while the MBF Foundation and the national depression initiative, Beyond Blue, funded it.

Professor Castle says researchers are now looking to state and federal governments and other sources so the course can be rolled out in other states.

"Because this is something which can significantly reduce relapse, reduce distress for people with mental illness, reduce distress for their family, and have an impact in terms of reduction in hospitalisation - so a stress on the overstretched mental health system generally - and also enhance people's well being and feeling of reintegration into society," he said.

"So they're enormous financial as well as individual and social gains."