Most people have mood changes when they are stressed, I see that as nothing unusual. It’s so vague, and I think that’s one of the problems I have with it.
As far, as external events playing a part, I agree. It just seems like some of the “hardships” people endure these days, are a walk in the park, and that we are becoming dependant on medicine to cope, instead of dealing with them.
I am not trying to make light of this stuff, I’m fully aware that there are many people that suffer from these conditions, so don’t jump me here. It just seems like a fuzzy line sometimes.
Well world Eater, then we need alot more genetic research, because bipolar disorder is almost always genetic. There will undoubtedly be a history of manic depression or depression(diagnosed or undiagnosed) in the family history. My mother is bipolar. My father has suffered from depression. My youngest son is bipolar as well. So it’s not really what you’d call “environmental”, though I suppose many of us grew up with mentally ill parents or relatives ourselves. And many of them went untreated, as mental illness was even more taboo say 20, 30,or 40 years ago.
And sadly, manic depression is UNDER diagnosed. Most patients go to see a doctor in the depressed phase of their illness. I myself was treated for depression for years. Unfortunately, anti-depressants taken alone can make manic depression worsen. This happened to me. I started and stopped treatment(depression and mania kicking in respectively) countless times before I was finally correctly diagnosed. Every time you suggest Bipolar disease is over diagnosed I think of all the years no-one could help me, because no-one knew what was wrong with me. I wish they HAD jumped the gun. I lost a few years of my life I’d really like to have back, thank you please.
World Eater, all I can say is that you haven’t seen what my husband was like before he went to therapy (or what he can be like occasionally now), and I don’t really care to talk more about his situation. It doesn’t seem fair to him somehow. If that means you “win” this point or whatever, then consider it done. Trust me, I was studying to be a psychologist, and contrary to what someone might think, this does not mean that I’m overanxious to “diagnose” anyone.
A cure would be wonderful. For now, the best they have is treatment. I will never be off my meds. They are “for life”.
I’ve been in counselling since I was 4 years old. I first tried to kill myself in elementary school. They tried medication for me in high school but it didn’t work (I’ve done research as an adult and found that that particular medication is pretty much crap). It wasn’t until another suicide attempt in my early twenties that I went back on (new) medication. That episode ended up with me, apparently (I don’t remember), wandering into an emergency room with a system full of pain pills, muscle relaxants (a friend of mine who was staying with me had been in a car accident) alcohol, anti-nausea meds, cold medicine and amphetamines. After having my stomach pumped and waking to find myself in four-point restraints and no idea where I was, I was put in the psych ward for a few days.
My life changed when I was put on medication. Ask anyone who knew me. I am the same person I always was, and I am still a very emotional person. The difference is that now I’m in control of my life. I’m able to cope day to day. I’m able to function.
Obviously, medication should not be thrown at anyone who feels bad for a little while. However, I think that bi-polar disorder and clinical depression are more common than a lot of people think.
Someone asked the question about what happened the day before you couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks…and I just wanted to give my story, briefly.
I was on a sort of downward spiral already, and decided a fun thing would be to go to Vegas with my friend to a Rammstein concert. Get out of the house. So I did.
She and I got into a fight with each other in Vegas, the concert was crappy (:D), I had jetlag, and when I got home, my house was dirty, and my parents showed up for a visit, so my house was crowded and busy and I couldn’t relax and I felt myself headed for a terrible anxiety attack.
Instead of dealing with THAT, I decided to just shake it off and ‘be strong’, which resulted in me SKIPPING ONE OF MY FAVORITE ACTIVITIES (this is a common symptom of depression), and staying home to ‘relax’. In that time I received an email from another friend who said “don’t bother ever speaking to me again” for reasons I’m still not sure of.
The next day my mom and sister demanded we go to IKEA ,so we went, and honestly, it was the closest I ever came to a nervous breakdown. My mother said she watched my face go ‘gray’ and I just started crying in IKEA, collapsing on one of their model couches. We drove home in silence, my mother was terrified, my sister knew exactly what was happening since she’d been through it, and after three days of crying and even more days of NO sleep, binge eating and not speaking to my husband, I finally went on medication.
Of course it wasn’t just a trip to Vegas that triggered my whole depression, but that sort of triggered ‘rock bottom’ like I suppose an alcoholic or an addict feels sometimes.
I totally respect that. This has nothing to do with winning, which I think we both could care less about. I just had some thoughts and some questions thats all.
I can get so irritable (when either manic or depressed) that it feels like every single one of my nerve endings is lying exposed and raw on the surface of my skin, and whoever is trying to interact with me is rubbing it with a Brillo pad.
WorldEater, FYI- there is a wealth of information out there (many books and such) about understanding bi-polar disorder. You would only have to spend a week with an unmedicated person with bi-polar disorder and read up about it a bit to completely understand what the disorder is all about.
It’s not having the blues, and it’s not depression. It’s a totally different animal. If you’re really interested, I’d be glad to look up a good reference for you.
What Zette said. It isn’t rational behavior. If you see someone who is in a bad job that they hate, and then you see someone who is bi-polar… well the two are quite obviously different if you are there to witness it.
Much appreciated Zette, I think I’m ok there. Actually I’ve had first hand experience with it, as an ex-girlfriend of mine whom I lived with years ago suffered from it. She was probably BP1, because she was pretty insane, and when she flew off the handle she was impossible to deal with. Drawing on my experience from that is why I feel it’s a serious condition that is often over-diagnosed, and perhaps because of that, misdiagnosed as well.
Anti-depressants like Prozac and Zoloft do not make you “high”. The effect is to make a depressed person feel “normal”. If a non-depressed person takes them, they wouldn’t do much of anything, except maybe have some annoying side-effects. So it’s not like being a drug addict, if that’s what you’re getting at. My understanding is that depressed people often are able to sucessfully get off the medication after a year or so. The depression may or may not return after the drug is discontinued. It’s a hell of a lot better than being severely depressed and possibly committing suicide.
There has supposedly been some success treating depression with therapy alone as well, and I think this is often tried before resorting to medication. But if someone is severely depressed, they can’t necessarily get out of it with therapy alone. It’s not just a matter of “cheering up” - that’s a common misconception.
Yeah, if you can. But if you are past a certain point, you need the help just to get to the point where you can start to change your thought patterns.
Think of it this way - you need a starter motor to get your car running, but once it gets going, you don’t need it anymore. But without the starter, it will never get going at all.
I don’t know as much about treating bi-polar, but I think that’s a different story. I think you pretty much have to stay on the Lithium to control the illness, is that correct?
One of the things that convinced me to get treatment is an not-normal reaction to outside events. Normal: pet dies, and you get depressed, stay in bed for a while, and eventually get over the grieving process. Abnormal: the printer jams, you start throwing computer parts across the room, go to bed, and stay there for a week. Or (as in my case) you start cutting yourself or other self-abuse.
Yeah, there can be misdiagnoses, and I know you’re not saying that everyone who is taking meds can just stop. But, the person has to look at his reactions to external stuff - is this a justified reaction, or is there something else going on? And, of course, is this affecting the person’s life? Natural grieving is good. Depression is bad.
Some people probably won’t be off meds, and have no intention of getting off of them. Which is cool - I wouldn’t expect someone like OpalCat to get herself off the meds anymore than a diabetic to get off her insulin. Others may need the meds as a stop-gap measure - for me, at least, stress seemed to exacerbate the depression, and I couldn’t start “working” on the problem until that external stress was gone from my life.
Of course, I’m still on Prozac, and honestly I’ll probably not be off it anytime soon.
Anyway, there’s a reason why I don’t respond to Pit threads… On preview, blowero said it better than I could.
There are other medications besides lithium. I was on lithium for a while but it didn’t seem to do much. I added an antidepressant and that helped, but eventually I stopped the lithium to breastfeed my son and since we noticed no change, I never went back on it. Now I’m on a mood stabilizer called Lamictal (which is actually an anticonvulsant) in addition to my anti-depressant and it is working very well.
Oh, absolutely. I didn’t want to imply that it wasn’t appropriate. I think it’s great. But she started out in archaeology. She went through an entire career change once she got treatment.
This sort of thing happened in my family too. My father, aunt, and cousin all had schizophrenia. One of my brothers became a counselor in a mental hospital, and my sister was a social worker for a while.
While I am not Bi-polar, I do suffer from depression. I have had it my entire life. My mother finally took me to a psychologist when I was 15. I went through therapy for two years before they decided to put me on meds (imipramine, Prozak was new then and far out of our price range.) I have tried going without medication, but it never works. I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. It is hereditary. No amout of “willing to make myself better” will make it go away. If I want to be mentally healthy it means medication for the rest of my life.
What do mentally ill people have to do be taken seriously? Do you really think we want to be this way? What if the “bad day at the office” was every single day of your life? What if nothing gave you joy? What if the thought of living another day was too much to bear?
Another heads up World Eater. Being bipolar does not make you “insane.” I am not psychotic. Nor do I have any psychotic episodes. Manic depression is not synonymous with “insanity.”
