I know a kid that even on medication hes very distructive last winter he broke every window in his mothers house as well as her windsheild and another persons window in there van over a cup of coffee,he spent 72 hours in the stress unit and thought it was funny.his mother is 74 years old and just replaced the last window this month its taken her 6 months to replace what he distroyed in less than 5 minutes.He has no remorce he isnt paying for the repairs.I could not do it.

David, Bipolar is like many other medication dependant disorders… SOmeone with diabetes will not go with out insulin because the person can not function without it… a person can even die if they do not take the insulin… so in this way they are the same. The problem is that people have this misconception that medication to help the brain function properly we can do without… BUT WE CAN NOT… There is no difference… to stay healthy, you have to take your medication and monitor your health every day (diabetic’s have to monitor multiple times a day). Why is it so hard to understand that it is OK to need medication to bring our bodies into balance. Donna

Hi, wanted to comment on not taking medication.

I’m 39 and was given my diagnosis as being bipolar on 1st Feb this year(2007), and was prescribed Depakote. I found it very hard to accept the diagnosis and so did not start the meds immediately. A few weeks later I had a really bad depressive episode and what was going on in my head scared me more than taking the meds. After 7wks of taking the Depakote I stopped because it was making me feel very sick and I didn’t find an improvement in my moods. After another few weeks and more rapid cycling my Dr has given me lithium to take. I was still reluctant but after a few chats with my physc nurses and understanding how this illness works and how Lithium could help me, I agreed to give it a go. I am into my 4th week on Lithium and apart from a depressive episode about 10 days ago which only lasted 3-4 hours in its acute stage, I feel wonderful. Not elated wonderful. Just normal wonderful. My head is clear, I feel calm and that feeling of dread of life has gone. I trully hope that this will sustain. I am for the first time in many years feeling positive about my future and feel that I am beginning my life again, instead of just existing. My point is that although I didn’t want to believe that I have a bipolar illness, the more I investigated the signs and symptoms, the more I had to accept that I had it. Now that I have and the Lithium seems to be working for me it is very liberating. There’s no big deal in popping a small pill every day. Sure, the wkly blood testing isn’t great, but that will eventually only happen once every 3 mths, when I’m stable on the correct theraputic level of Lithium, but it’s a small inconvenience in order to feel as good as I do now!!!!!!!!!!
I have to be realistic about the future and I know that I will probably have some episodes along the way, but at least now I have the help and support of a wonderful Psych team and I am in the middle of changing how I live my life to enable me to avoid any stresses etc.
Acceptance of this illness has been key to my recovery.
Acceptance of needing to take medication has been key to my recovery.

with out my mendication I would be a mess. Not that it is a cure all because it is not I still feel my ups and downs they are just easyier to fend off (most of the time)
I don’t understand why people don’t communicate with thier docters if they don’t like what they are on as in the weight gain. then the docoer has something to work with and may come up with a plan “just for you”.
My siser in law and I both have this disorder she goes on and off most of the time and gets into everyone bussiness and in thier face or hides form the world. We usually keep our distances form each otherbecause she fights and attacks according to what she precieves you are to her that day the next she won’t even remeberwhat she’s done or said.
I have been told I do the same thing but have become more stable with my meds. I know it will never be perfect but we can only try with what we have.

Hi Dave, my daughter was on the medication SEROQUEL and when we would go to her Dr every week he would ask how she was doing and when we told him we felt this medicaation was making the situation worse he would increase her dosage to the point where she was taking 600mg of this medication which isn’t approved let alone not recommended for children (which we were’nt aware of) along with the normal dosage for an adult was 400mg so why did they have a 11year old on 600mg? She became so violent and out of control and would physically attack me, when we turned to social services for help they accused us of abuse and neglect, our daughter was placed in DHS custody and after along court battle they couldn’t find any abuse or neglect on our part but yet couldn’t understand why we as parents couldn’t control an 11 year old girl. She finally gets to come back home Friday and I can’t wait but yet we’re all a little scared because she isn’t on any medication and gets frustrated really easy, and she isn’t an only child. I need help taking this public because this is another case of were the system is failing these children. The world would rather blame the parents for doing wrong then want to believe something is seriously wrong that they have no idea on how to handle it. I have never laid a hand on my children and I was the one being physically abused but I was drug through the courts and my other children were frieghtned they were going to be taken away to. How about the family being charged for the death of there four year old daughter she was also taking SEROQUEL but yet again blame the parents it’s bad enough they lost there daughter and can’t bring her back but to be blamed for it to, that is so WRONG!! We need to start going after the Dr.’s who put these children on this medication when they’ve been told it hasn’t been approved nor recommended for children… PARENT’S BEWARE

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x a holistic more natural approach can only enhance a person’s well being..even if taking other known medication like lithium… x

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My daughter-in-law is bipolar. But the problem is not that she doesn’t take her medication, but the way she takes it and she uses her conditon to bully every one around her. She takes her medication in the morning within a good time frame but, she is diabetic also and eats donuts with her meds. then goes back to bed unti late in the morning, takes another med, not the same as in the moring, then may or may not stay up. At 5 she takes another med. goes back to bed then 2 hours later takes what is supposed to be her 9 pm med. then it’s back to bed. When she is awake she is bullying everyone around her. She is slowly making enemies of her own family. Any advice you can give me will be appreciated.

thank you for this wonderful site…

Chelated calcium & magnesium and naturally-derived multivitamins have helped me function better and have fewer BP symptoms and side effects. This is IN ADDITION TO MEDICATION. In clinical trials, St. John’s Wort did not work for bipolar disorder at all and should be avoided due to interaction with other BP meds. Herbal/natural remedies are good for a lot of things. BP is not one of them. If you had blood poisoning, or a strep infection, for example, you wouldn’t go for an herbal remedy. Certain things require modern medicine. BP, like bacterial infections, is one of those things. Both can kill you if they’re not treated. From what I’ve heard, untreated BP kills one out of 3 victims. It’s nothing to play around with.

I have been through hell with my wife Karen! We were together for 23 years and I deeply loved her. We have a daughter at home who was 11 1/2 when this all started and who is now 13. She lives with me. We raised a son together, he was 4 1/2 when I met Karen ( she was pregnant at 16) he just had his 27th birthday and lives in another state. We are close and talk on the phone typically several times a week. This episode has been going on since November 2005 to varying degrees.

Back in November of 2005 she suddenly told me that she did not love me and that she would be moving out in March of 2006. She did. I was blind sided, there had been no negative incident between us. She had several affairs both before and after moving out as I now realize. The first affair was with no other than the biological father of her son who she had no contact with since she was 16. You can imagine the psychological damage that this caused within our family. I was working nights at the time and had no knowledge that this was going on. She would leave are then 11 1/2 yr. old daughter home alone to do her home work and sometimes put her self to bed. This in not the Mother that she had ever been and is polar opposite of who she always was.

She is not diagnosed but after exhaustive research and 23 years of observation, I have never been more sure of anything in my life. She is bipolar and not getting the help she needs.

To make matters worse my son was able to get her to see a doctor last May (DO Psychiatrist). She had 4 or 5 visits to this Doctor and would not allow the family to have any input. She went to him and lied as she is famous for and put on that other demeanor that she is so capable of. Apparently she convinced him that she was just fine. So now she feels validated.

She has all the classic symptoms. She started self medicating with alcohol on a daily basis. I have had many reasons to suspect drug use, to include the girls that she started running around with and what I know about them but no hard evidence. She displays mood swings and depression. She has become much worse through the years. The primary symptom years ago was her yelling and screaming about nothing and for hours at a time. Sometimes every day of the week. Primarily but not not exclusively in the morning as we were trying to get on with our day. There have been spending sprees and she has changed jobs within careers and changed careers. She has at times even displayed psychotic behaviors. There has been a major episode right around every 5 years, for as long as I have known her. In the past I was able to work through the episodes with her until she became relatively stable again. Not this time. I have not been able to help at all and she has decided that I’m a two headed monster, I guess. She has been living with another man who I have learned is diagnosed OCD and ADHD. He destroyed his 30 year marriage with alcohol and affairs.

Our son and daughter will not have anything to do with her and it has been that way for months. She will not even communicate with me. She is still able to hold a job and is living and working an hour away from our home. She abandoned her husband and family completely. When she was manic and still at home it was as obvious as the nose on your face. She had delusions of grandeur about everything and seemed to be in her own altered reality.

Skipping so many details, at this time we are sadly, in a divorce proceeding. She has made outrageous claims about our lives together. The Kids and I speak with one voice because we know the truth. Again, I loved this Woman with my heart and soul and feel so defeated. To realize that the right Doctor and medications could have returned her to the Mother and Wife that she was and not be able to get the right help, is heart breaking. We can not get the help because she simply can not see her problem, no insight. She believes that her outrageous behaviors are justified and that her thinking is correct. We as her family certainly Know otherwise. We do not even know who she is at this point. She looks like the family member that we knew and loved but appearance is as far as it goes. Even with the many emotional problems that were displayed through out the years, she was a loving Mother and Wife.

At this point, I guess all that is left to do is try to pick up the pieces and move on with life, without her. I am trying to be both Mom and Dad. Our Daughter continues to be a straight A student but I know she is deeply hurt. She was very close as would be expected, to her Mother. This comes at such a critical developmental time in her life and I am afraid of how this might manifest in her down the road.

If anyone here has any advice, I am all ears. This is but a sound bite of our sored family story.

WOW Dan, sounds like my story. married 20 years, told each other every day we loved each other before leaving for work. She came home one day , told me and the kids (age 15& 17) that she decided that day she wasnt happy anymore and she was leaving. That was two years ago and she hasnt spent but a couple of hours with the kids in these last two years. She only lives 5 min. away. She is now engaged to be married and she didnt even tell the kids that she filed and we got divorced. Hard for the kids to not think she is evil. Best of luck to all supporters. I am a full time dad and mom and housekepper and cook and everything else plus work a job, But I think all that is easier than trying to support someone that does not realize they have a problem. Best of luck to all.

Talk about shocking. I was drugged, raped, robbed and strangled by a date. When the police found out I was bipolar they wrote me off as a crazy drug addict. He stole items easy to pawn: my Bose, DVD player, Nissan 300ZX, etc. I had to stay at the emergencey room for 15 hours. I got no report or case number just Baker-acted. Once they saw my medicine it was all over for me. I also was NOT tested for Aids, had a rape kit done, or my blood tested for the drug I told them he gave me in my JUICE. No drugs or alcohol for me. Mother and I had to go to the police station and complain to a detective. We were lucky. He was sympathetic. Within hours he had a warrant for the man’s arrest. Every morning I get up and step in the spot where he broke my nose, 2 of my ribs, chewed off part of my finger, and strangled me. Fortunately, he is in prison again. I have my car. But instead of attempted murder he got Battery. I am thankful he is in jail but my treatment by the Bradenton, Florida city police was horrendous. As a result of all this, I sleep with an Ice Pick. Sounds silly but is the only way I can sleep. Even with my meds. It served to further my fear of relationships. Very far reaching. Every morning I have to stepped out of bed unto the place where he threw me. My therapist has enough material for a lot of sessions. Joan Marie

Problem is that it seems to me that lots of people are over-medicated – I have had that experience myself – but THEY never get to a cooperative psychiatrist to balance the medications – and they just say “the meds make me feel awful” and they quit.

Patients need to know that no one but themselves really knows how the meds make you feel. Patients have a right to monitor their own reactions and give that feedback to their doctors. Similarly, caretakers can make their own observations. This comes from a someone who ALWAYS takes meds now – but once I didn’t & had a relapse…But at that time I wasn’t on balanced medications – And there WAS a time I felt I was in a stupor – that’s because I have bipolar 2, which is mostly depression – not bipolar 1 with its manic highs, and I had been prescribed too much of the “downer” medicines…Took me some time to get to that point. Don’t give up!

To Lisa –

I was married to a bipolar for three years and it was always difficult. It never got better because he wouldn’t take meds. Bipolar is also hereditary – he gave it to his kids. Our marriage ended in his suicide and I’ve been raising his kids by myself for nearly 15 years (remember my bipolar son?). I love my kids and am so grateful for them, but it sure hasn’t been easy. If I were you, I’d tell him that if he doesn’t take his meds and tell his ex-wife to take a hike, that you’re history. Just my opinion – based on experience.

:)allgreen

Dear Dan,
I can completely sympathize and empathize. I am going through almost the exact same thing as you are. I guess that the biggest question for us to face now is, who are we after the aftermath of all of this? There should be a support group for that as well, because maybe there are people like you and myself that are just left to reach in and find the strongest part of ourselves and hold on to that. I always have to remember after having been through what could have made me forget who I am…that there is still God and that the strongest part of myself is made from him, and nothing can destroy him. That is how I come back to the strong part of myself.
It centers me back to who I was for a moment, before I became a part of this other person in my life. Of course the person did not mean to harm me from his illness, however, to say that I haven’t grown from all of this, would be a lie. I have grown, yet I have seen things that I’ve never wanted to be exposed to in life from what he’s put me through. I only cling to the verbage that my father told me…”God will not put on you what you cannot bear” and that which my former fellow soldiers had told me in training, “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” and “pain is only weakness leaving the body.”
In this way, I think of the emotionally painful things that I have undergone from this person and I am only left to wonder why in life, have I come into this person’s path? So I can help him, and if not for anything else, I guess that it was God’s way of teaching me to be more humble, more patient (as much as I could be) and that were yet more people in life that I just did not understand. We are certainly not all perfect and it forced me to take a look at things from another perspective. Am I happy? not at the moment, no. Do I have to accept the situation as it is until it changes? yes. I look at my man who wants to run off as well now with other women and think that maybe he realizes how much he’s hurting me by being around. Of course he’ll cover his reason for leaving with other things, but overall..the change must happen in order for me to heal and him to come to a place that makes him get help and heal from that which has caused him to be that way in the first place. I have realized, that it’s his private pain from something that he carries, and he hasn’t yet invited me to join in the healing process of that. When he invites me to join, maybe that is when he’ll go to therapy. For now, he wants to be alone with whatever is in him and his lashing out and cheating etc…, I believe, is his way of saying to me that he’s not ready to face his internal pain just yet and that he’s not willing to grow past it yet.
You seem to be a good man, keep up the good work as a father who must be both mother and father. Take care of your children. There is still love in your household from your kids. Be thankful and put everything you have now into them. Be happy around them, do happy things with them and the healing for yourself will begin. The loss is there, yes. I suffer it too, but it can be cushioned a lot more with the love from the rest of your family.

Dear Dave, I was diagnosed with bipolar in 1981-26 years ago. I have been on lithium for all that time with no real problems. One time a Doctor wanted me to try going “cold turkey” and stop and the lithium. I was ready to climb the walls and got right on my regimen of lithium dosage of 3- 300 mg at nite and I was back to feeling good again. I will never get off my medication as the consequences are a nightmare. My motto is “if it works-don’t mess with it. The problems associated with getting one’s medication is not worth it. The medication makes the playing field almost normal but it really helps us to function reasonably well in our lives. Trying to live with a bipolar disorder without medication is like trying to drive a car with no gasoline. Thanks for letting me share.

Bob

4:28 PM