after 15 years of struggling and listening to others- i have finally found a fantastic shrink who has all the time in the world, never rushes sessions, challeneges me when i’m obviously wrong and isn’t afraid to let me challenge him over new treatments. and if and when i trip over because of my illness or own stupidity. he’ll pick me up and dust me off and never say i told you so. it took me 15 years of crappy doctors to find him, never ever give up. your life depends on it.

Dear Dave:

I appreciate your website, as a bipolar supporter, I agree with your remarks about crazy advice. Most of the time from non-professionals and I’m sad to say my own family members they did not lend any support but had advice without any knowledge of the disease. My biggest grip is with some doctors and the attitudes when your trying to be a supporter. They make you feel like an intruder.

Thanks again for your website it has answered many of my questions.

David, hi I have been hearing alot from my family that my meds arent doing me any good and go off them. Theres no way of that happening. Yesterday I found out im having a manic episode. That is way it seems my meds arent working. Talk about crazy thoughts and actions. Even the doctor I saw noticed them.So now I tring to keep myself calm and stable at this time and it hard. I can leave the house for a couple of days. Well I have to go. Danielle

I know ECT was the biggest thing here in Alberta, Canada for BP and postpartum. It may have worked for some ppl, but I have yet to meet someone that it has worked for. My Mom has BP and my sister had postpartum with her 1st daughter when she was 19. So this Doctor decided to zap Mom and Daughter. Not sure what it all did to Mom, she sure did not feel better but pretended she did so they would stop. AND well my poor sis she does not remember her wedding giving birth to her daughter and a lot of other important stuff. You will find her somedays looking at her wedding pictures just crying…..it is really sad. Happy note though that was 10 years ago and my Sis has 2 more kids and no postpardum. Mom though, she has been in the hospital for 7 days now, 23 days to go.

On the subject of ideas and things that can improve your efforts with your organization and the impact it has on the bipolar community…..here it goes.

Maybe (since there is a lack of good doctors) your organization should focus on “recruiting” good doctors to take up an interest in this matter and begin their practice soley in bipolar, or establish and administer a bipolar doctor network that “good” doctors can be placed in and you could send out this network list to all (me!) who are interested in finding a good doc in the area.

Just a thought….it would take a lot of work but is possible.

Thank you~
T

David, when My bipolar girlfriend first started taking her medications, NOBODY informed her that the medications would cause her to gain weight. She started thinking that she was pregnant, because all of her weight gain was in her abdomen. We even went to a midwife, and those ladies did not question her about her “pregnancy”. When she discontinued those meds, the swelling in her abdomen went down.

This brings me to more questions and comments!! The biggest “side effect” of those medications were the “sexual side effects”. What they don’t tell you on television is that one main sexual side effect is that, if you’re a woman, you become unable to achieve an orgasm. That is, if your libido hasn’t been completely suppressed in the first place. My girlfriend has had body image issues for most of her life. If they’re giving you meds that make you fat, THAT is going to mess with your head. If they’re giving you meds that make it impossible to have an orgasm, THAT is going to add to the problem of achieving any “normalcy” in your life.

In short, David, you should address making sure you work with your doctor to get meds that work for you. There are many different kinds of medications, and I think that some get pushed off on people NOT because they’re the right ones, but because that’s the medicine that the pharmaceutical companies are promoting.

We just found out our 18 year old daughter has bipolar 1 with psychosis. She tried to commit suicide two weeks ago. We were so ignorant about how to help. I hear the crazies. It is so stressful when my husband and I are just trying to learn how to support our daughter. I have had people tell me all kinds of things, like, does she really need the medications?, and you know the medications caused the bipolar. Also, I have had the take vitamins lines too. I have not found very much about psychosis and bipolar. She struggles with audio hallucinations. How can we help her cope? It also is so hard because she wants to be independent but needs an advocate with the doctors. Any advice? We already fired one psychiatrist and are starting a second one now.

Hi Dave
I heard some bipolar crazies like “taking all the people with bipolar disorder off there med’s and puting them all on an island together.

By

I have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, that was after 10+ years of being told I had major depression and border-line personality disorder with histrionic personality traits. Once diagnosed (finally) It was never explained why I needed medicine, so I stopped taking it. It’s like all the doctors treated me like a stupid person who wouldn’t understand. No because I know my disorder is getting worse, I need back on meds, but I want to find a doctor who will listen to me, discuss my meds with me, and will allow my family to tell them if I am not as OK as I tell the doctor I am. If you ask me when I am manic, everything is amazing, ask my family and I am driving them up the wall and I don’t even know I’m doing it. Why don’t doctors make patients bring their families to appointments, and ask them how things are really going? That is what is really crazy.

Muchas gracias por tus notas Dave!! Yo llevé una vez a mi hijo– que después de varios años fue diagnosticado como bipolar–a una psicóloga que me dijo: “B es muy inteligente pero lento, y se desconcentra” ¿Qué propuso ella entonces para “curarlo” que practicara diariamente con un jueguito de computación diseñado especialmente para agilizar la mente y facilitar la concentración!!!

One bonus of having bipolar disorder is being an authority on the insane. (Never people, mind you, I do like having friends.) But if I actually tell people who know me that the Democratic theory on winning the war by leaving quickly and quietly is, well, wackadoo, I’m almost guaranteed a laugh. Because, well, they think I should know. This journey has got to be good for something, and worth a laugh is a very good start.

I have Bipolar. hate it. Cant change how I am. Bin in therapy. Bin on pills. Neither helps. May I die now ?

looney2361, your very lucky you still have your husband to support you. I was only diagnosed in 2004 – I’m 53 years old. My husband could be considered one of the “crazies”, I guess. He tried to deal with my UNdiagnosed BiPolar mood swings all by himself. Said he tried and tried to make me happy. We went into $50 thousand dollars in debt from this -he let ME spend money or BOUGHT me everything that caught my fancy. Meanwhile, during my worst mood swings, I would be nastily berating him and delusional= saying he’d said things he hadn’t (typical BiPolar). When I told him I had BiPolar he just didn’t believe it was true, not sure it existed…after all, we’d all thought I’d had ADD a few years earlier. The end of Sept. I tried to commit suicide (he’d said he’d wanted a divorce 2 YEARS ago but never had papers drawn up or even talked /planned seriously about a separation or began discussing dividing our stuff, I tried to correct in me some of the things he’d complained about for years and he’d say “nothing you do will change my mind”, he still wanted a divorce. It’s been 2 years of pure torture with that carrot of hope (words vs. actions) dangling all the time. I finally snapped, and during a down episode I tried to kill myself. I ended up in the hospital for a week. He actually asked my Mom “Does she REALLY have BiPolar?” I CANNOT get him to change his mind about leaving me. Even if it WAS all because of the BiPolar, he apparently doesn’t want to deal with it, despite my trying so hard to manage it on my own.(I have a therapist, a great Psychiatrist, and am now on the right meds from him; plus I’ve read tons of stuff to educate myself – including your e-mails Dave). He’s said he’s “worn out”; “there’s just nothing left” of his feelings for me. The other “crazy” is also in my family. My brother said, early on when I first told my biologic family, “It’s just the trendy ailment of the day. A few years ago everybody had ADHD – now it’s BiPolar disease, tomorrow it’ll be something else.” Thank God, at least my suicide attempt woke THEM up to the reality. They can look back on my childhood and teen years and it helps explain a lot of my past behavior and decisions. They are VERY supportive of me now, but live hundreds of miles away. My biggest worry is who to turn to once my husband leaves me. I don’t want to be a burden to my sons. One’s 17, the other’s 20. They’re JUST starting out on their own lives.I don’t want to be the reason holding them back from their dreams. That’s another thing my husband “blames” me for – or at least is so bitter that he angers every time he ses me, I think – just thinking about all the dreams he’d had that never came true. He couldn’t convince me to work, even after he felt the boys were old enough – I was downright agoraphobic at times (big word meaning afraid to go out of the house for ANY reason). So, I didn’t help us stay out of debt, AND I didn’t provide the extra $ needed to save up for the dreams we both may have had. He “stuck it out” with me (as he puts it) as long as he could. He now feels he probably wasted 20 years of his life. He has said he knew there were MAJOR problems as early as our 3rd year of marriage and he should have left then but he didn’t want to hurt me. I was so needy and he was co-dependent. He felt “obligated” to try to “fix” me. But, it means our marital happiness was pretty much faked by him – he was unhappy most of the time…the while thing was a lie. It REALLY hurts that he doesn’t want to save anybody but himself now. He’s even mentioned he looked into a job overseas, though wasn’t in the finalists. If that’s so, he’s pretty much figuring on abandoning all 3 of us – despite his earlier promises “I’ll take care of you, you won’t be out on the street. “Anyway, enough “pity party” as my therapist calls it. There’s a small (very small) part of me that’s glad I at least got him to come right out and admit he’s definitely done with me, instead of giving me mixed messages which he had been for the last two years (because he didn’t want to hurt me = same old mistake he made our entire marriage, being nice when he didn’t really want to). Anyway – those are the 2 crazies in my family. One who just didn’t believe it existed and one who just thought it was getting all the media hype at this point in history and they’ll call it something else later. Sorry this is so long.

I would like to know what you are suppose to do when you need a refill on medication but your doctor wants you to be retested and the therapist can’t get you is for another 3 months. Then to top things off your family looks at you and says “when you feel like your going to explode and go off the deep end close your eyes breath and count to 10? What kind of crap is that count to 10 what is that going to do nothing I tried it then flipped out 10 x’s worse!

Zanne and the Zoo:
I understand your frustration, but I don’t think you can blame the doctors. I’m pretty sure they are bound by FEDERAL law not to prescribe more than a month’s worth at a time for drugs classified as “controlled substances” (note the word “controlled”) – which pretty much ALL meds for BiPolar are.As to family: I put forth the only thing you can try as a last ditch effort in my post above. After that, if they choose to NOT care, NOT believe, whatever; I’m afraid I agree with Zanne Cherie. You’ll just have to stop worrying whether or not certain people “get it”. The part about “walk a mile in my shoes” was priceless, Zanne. Well said. It’s what I was trying to get at when I told Cherie to ask them “
WHY would I want to be this way?”

Cherie:
First off; I’m a bit confused. Who prescribes your meds? Your doc or your therapist? My therapist has nothing to do with my meds, except to want to know when they’ve been changed by the doc and why.
2. As far as “test”ing you first; the doctor needs to know what level of the drugs are staying in your system. This is how they know to adjust the dosage up or down. They listen to how you’re feeling and behaving in your own opinion, they watch how you’re behaving in their office, check the blood levels, and make a decision.
3.As to your family’s “count to ten” attitude…It’s obvious they know NOTHING about BiPolar Disorder. YOU will have to gently educate them. Scream ing at them will not help, only make them dig in their heels in their own wrong beliefs. For me, I got them together and told them I had somehting really serious to talk to them about and asked them to not leave before I was done and to have an open mind. You can even start off with how they tell you to count to ten and then explain why that doesn’t work. They obviously need to read up on BiPolar, encourage them to do so – or print out some good stuff you can leave with them I did this and my Mom devoured the reading, ending up saying,”Well, THAT explains all that behavior in college that worried your father and I so.” (It was a definite manic phase). Adding in personal examples of manic and depressive phases that YOU remember might help.

3. Tell them that, as upset as you made THEM over the years, they have NO CLUE how upset YOU’VE (secretly?) been about yourself. How you’ve hated yourself at times, HOW YOU”VE CRIED ALONE AT NIGHT, wondering “What’s WRONG with me?”, how much you’ve LONGED to be “normal” like everybody else, and didn’t know why you weren’t (before you were diagnosed), and didn’t know how to get there. How terrified of YOURSELF you’ve been. Ask them if they REALLY believe you’ve WANTED to alienate or husrt them, the ones in your life you love the most. Zanne and the Zoo says the same thing when she makes the comment about “walking a mile in my shoes”.
4. Tell them that you DON’T WANT TO hurt them in any way anymore, that you’re doing what YOU can to contro the disease (remind them it cannot be cured, only ‘managed”). You’re seeing a therapist, you’re on medication to help stabilized the chemical imbalances in your brain (but meds don’t make it all better – only help_). Tell them you love them all, and you’re trusting your very life to them. They need to be your supporters, more intensely at the start (to get you on a habitual regimen of taking meds on time, getting enough sleep nightly, and NOT getting yourself in over your head on things = causing yourself enough stress to trigger an episode). Relieve THEIR worries of being tied to you “ball&chain” forever by telling them that if they help more intensely now, you’ll be able to keep yourself on track alone more and more – though you will ALWAYS need at least one supporter you can call on for IMMEDIATE help in a crisis (like wanting to or attempting suicide). Even with meds and therapy and such, it can still crop up in a MAJOR depressive episode. Good Luck.

Raven P- Wow, so many people think they know, for years i was so missed up that i joined a church and did great it gave me something to make me feel better, I got so into it that when i was depressed I thought it was that i was doing well spiritualy i beat me self up so bad for 5 years, thinking i couldnt even be a good christian, then I was diagnoised, and but on meds i also had times i had to wait for them to work. but i got through it and I dont beat myself up anymore, and I even found my relationship with God. Its great to have God and Meds.