Family member thread anyone?

[fleabert]

My mother has manic depression. she was diagnosed and began treatment when I was three, so I have never known her another way. She is very young to have a 31 yo daughter, btw, she's only 48.

It has been a tough road for her the last few years, her illness is generally one of rapid cycling and psychosis. very few stereotypical depressed attributes show themselves, it's mainly psychosis when she is having an episode. It was once a year (spring fever) from my early years to teens (3-12) while married to a complete asshole who did nothing to help her. and then after the divorce it was two really bad, really long episodes until I was 14. She met her current husband and he is wonderful, supportive and loving. From 14-20 no major psychosis or episodes. then it started again. every two-three years another episode. Now she has had one a year for three years. They have been some of the worst yet.

It has been a tough road for me too. I moved out of state 6 years ago and can't be there for her like I used to be, the rest of my life actually. Her mother passed away a year ago, the lithium started affecting her kidneys at the same time so she got yanked off of it. New meds were terrible and she never grieved for her mother,nor could she participate fully in her illness/death/funeral. She is now back on Lithium, after a kidney check showed everything is okay, so the grief process has finally started.

I am having a hard time supporting her emotionally, as I am still so sad about losing my grandmother. I am pissed about the lithium, and wonder if it is just inevitable that she will need a transplant. She and my stepfather don't seem to see it as a big deal. but it freaks me out. She says she will never get a transplant, even if it is mine. I cannot stand her psychiatrist, he frequently diagnoses her over the phone (since he knows her so well, 17 yr history) and charges her an arm and a leg (not on their insurance).

anyway. just want to vent and find out if there are any other family members out there looking for the best way to support a mom, dad, sister, brother, etc... I don't have the answers, but I do have experience.

love and peace to all.

[Droopy]

1. Apparently mental illness runs in my family

My dad has experienced depression for most of his adult life, but never got treatment for it until just recently. He is an alcoholic because he used to self medicate with vodka. My mother divorced him when I was 8 and she got custody of me so I didn't see him a whole lot until I was an adult. But I did witness his drinking binges when I got to see him more. He's been sober for a year now and he was prescribed an anti-depressant that seems to be working well. He just remarried about a month ago.

My sister is going to see a psychologist next week for the first time for what we think is obsessive/compulsive disorder. Her paranoia of germs is starting to take over her life. I'm hoping the psychologist can help her through talk therapy, but I won't be surprised if she is referred to a psychiatrist for a med.

I'm the worst case of all. I have schizoaffective disorder, a nasty combination of schizophrenia and manic-depression. I take lithium, too, and I can tell you that I've never heard of it affecting one's kidneys. The only bad thing I know about it is that it can zap your thyroid gland. The psychiatrist should run blood tests every 3 months or so to check for lithium levels and to see if your thyroid gland is ok. Lithium has worked very well in controlling my mania. I haven't had a manic episode since my last hospitaliztion when I started taking lithium a year and a half ago.

Regarding your mother having more frequent and intense episodes, that is usually what happens to people with manic-depression as they age. The illness gets worse, but I think that if a person consistently takes meds then they should be ok. I've heard of people relapsing while on meds, but relapses are less likely to happen when you're on meds.

I think one of the best things you can do for your mother is to try to understand her illness as best you can. Read up on it. Talk to her about it if she's willing and ask her what it's like to go through a psychotic episode. And be there for her as much as you are able. I don't know where I'd be without my family just being there to offer support and to listen to me.

[fleabert]

2. thanks.

http://www.bipolarworld.net/Phelps/ph_2002/ph616.htm

there isn't much out there about the kidney function issue, but her psychiatrist is the one who ordered the kidney tests after routine blood work. She was found to be in the early stages of kidney malfunction, so it was discovered really early. Nine months off of lithium (he had her go off it immediately, so it naturally caused an immediate episode) and she is now back on it.

In the early years, she would do the typical thing, feel better and quit meds since 'she didn't need them anymore' and have an episode, go to the hospital, come home two weeks later and be fine for another year. but now, she has never been off her meds of her own accord, and still has episodes, really psychotic too. this is with meds. I was able to travel and be with her for the most recent one. (her dh will not hospitalize her, they made a pact when they got married) It was hell to be with her all day during psychosis. There are flashes of lucidity, but they are few and far between, it is devastating to see her go thru it. She is very candid with me about the episodes, that which she can remember afterwards.

One telling thing she said to me was when I had first gotten to the house and crawled into bed with her, she turned over (very manic at 7am) and asked if we could listen to music really loud. I laughed and said no, it's a trigger for your mania. She sighed and just looked at me for a minute and said, 'this sucks, I am crying on the inside, but my mind is moving so fast I don't have time to make the tears.', and then she told me my stepfather peed outside instead of in the bathroom, and only where the dog poops. Sigh.

My grandmother (the one who died) used to care for her during the episodes and just sit next to my mom and laugh and cry at the same time at the funny/crazy things my mom would say when she was sick. She would say if I don't laugh a little I will go crazy too. Mom would laugh too, esp. when grandma or I would cry. She thought it was hilarious that we were so sad when she was sooooo high!

BTW- a couple of psych. diagnosed my mom as schizophrenic before they gave her the MD diagnosis. She hears voices and all when manic and in psychosis. She tells me it is very scary and difficult to deal with. So, while I haven't walked in your shoes, I am certainly empathetic to your illness. So glad Lithium has helped keep you out of the hospital. My mom says it's the worst place in the world if you want to feel sane.

[Droopy]

5. It sounds like your mom needs to be on an anti-psychotic

I don't know why her psychiatrist hasn't prescribed her one. It really sounds like she has my illness, but I guess it is possible for people experiencing mania to have psychotic episodes. I take a drug called Geodon and it works wonderfully on my psychosis with no side affects so far. I've been taking the drug for about a year and a half. It's expensive, but my insurance covers a lot of the cost and it is worth every penny I have to shell out for it.

It sounds like to me that your mom is needlessly suffering. If she is experiencing psychosis and is manic depressive she should be taking an anti-psychotic as well as lithium.

Psychosis is an illness that can be impossible to get through. People who are psychotic don't have the ability to think rationally. Unlike your mom, my psychosis wouldn't come and go. When it set in it was here to stay. The only thing that saved me was a hospitalization and an anti-psychotic. Seeing as how here episodes are becoming more frequent, I would be alarmed that she needs to try a different course of drug therapy.

[Gryffindor_Bookworm]

3. My mother had some sort of mood disorder.

Not sure what, but her mood swings were so rapid and insane, and so bloody INTENSE, that there had to be something chemical going on there.

Out of my five brothers, one has a mild case of agoraphobia and one really should be on something for anxiety, but isn't. The other three have no known mental health issues.

[Mabus]

4. A couple of my family too

My father has suffered from "combat fatigue" since returning from Korea. The few jobs he held outside the house never lasted long. Often, he would get into these paranoid manic episodes and end up getting fired or storming off in a huff. He's obsessive-compulsive, delusional and lashes out physically and emotionally. One of his favorite things to do is to find reasons to sue the government.

He also has had one-on-one conversations with god since I was a kid. As a result, he's done some really bizarre things like trying to walk to Santa Fe, about a 1200 mile trip, in his underwear. He was caught several blocks away by my brothers & forced into the van to take him home. God wanted him in Santa Fe. Thankfully, god has never told him to hurt anyone. God just tells him what other people are doing and my dad believes him.

My mom got him to the VA once and when the word "schizophrenia" was mentioned he never went back.

My sister, who was hit by a car several years ago, is now mentally retarded in addition to having schizophrenia. She's married to Kurt Cobain and/or River Phoenix, depending on what day it is. When she's in one of her manic phases she calls me up to 10 times a day and we have the same conversation over and over again. She's having the final rounds of reconstructive surgery next year. I think the meds she's taking around the time of surgeries has made finding the right equilibrium for the lithium she's on a little tough somethings. Overall, she's actually doing pretty well.

Then there's my step-daughter. Ever since I met her the excuse has been "oh that's just what she does" or "she just does goofy things once in a while." My husband and I finally sat down and talked. He was going to listen to me or I was going to leave. I had been cataloging my step-daughter's behavior to show him that something needed to be done. It was a difficult time and ended up taking several days. I got his sister in on the conversation and she urged him to get help for his daughter too.

We did get her into therapy for a while but that stopped when she insisted she didn't want to go and her mom gave in. After her suicide attempt we finally got a little support from his ex-wife in getting her help. She was on Prozac for the time she was hospitalized (30 days, children's psychiatric hospital) and for about three months thereafter. Then she refused to take her medications. My husband would drive across town every night to make sure she took her meds. She won't stay here because I'm in league with the Masons and the Illuminati. I'm basically the Whore of Babylon in her eyes. Anyway, she started taking the meds herself and told him he didn't need to hold her hand anymore. Then she went off.

This has been the cycle. We get her help, she does it for a while and then stops. I blame her mom, who until recently, still insisted nothing was wrong with her child.

In the past two months she has been picked up by two different police departments for erratic behavior. She also just turned 18. She's been hospitalized twice in the past 2 months. At first she was diagnosed as bipolar. Now it is bipolar with psychotic episodes/schizophrenic (which is what I suspected with my background). She was just released from the hospital yesterday after a short stay.

Right now I'm a bundle of nerves.

[diamondsoul]

6. ARRRRRRGH!

ok sorry, Lithium being given to bpd patients just makes me livid. Your mother needs a new psychiatrist, one who realizes that Lithium is like taking a jackhammer to a walnut.

What she needs is a combination anti-depressant and anti-psychotic and NOT one or the other but BOTH! I'll try to get back to this thread with some information on why Lithium is a bad treatment for bpd and many physicians are moving away from it to the combination I mentioned. It's useless stuff for the most part and only works for a handful of people. Most it just turns into walking emotionless zombies which just makes the disorder worse.

People with BPD need to learn skills to cope with emotions not to kill them or turn them off and that's all lithium does.

[Droopy]

7. Lithium doesn't have that affect on me

I'm perfectly well and among the living thank you very much. Far from being an "emotionless zombie." I know someone else who swears by it for controlling her mood swings. I take 900 mg a day which is an average dose and I haven't experienced mania or severe depression for a year and a half.

Regarding learning how to cope with emotions. I'd like to see you cope with being so high, naturally, that you think you're some kind of super human only to have the bottom fall out and make you so depressed that you can barely move. Bipolar is a serious disease and most doctors will tell you that it requires medication for the rest of the patient's life. Some people see that as a kind of death sentence, and I used to, but when I started taking meds and they started working for me I realized that I'd lost a lot of my life to my illness and made a pact with myself that I'd never stop taking my meds.

[diamondsoul]

8. Um, Droopy?

I did say it works for a handful of people and I AM bipolar myself.

[Droopy]

9. OK

You ought to know that people with bipolar have very little or no control over their mood swings. That can make dealing with the emotions associated with the untreated illness next to impossible.

[DemExpat]

10. A dear girlfriend of mine is bipolar/manic-depressive....

and tried lithium as a young woman while in a Psychiatric Hospital for several months.... which did not help her at all. Electric shocks also were no relief for her.

Since then, while raising her family, she has had periods of being pretty stable and periods of terrible swings when her feeling invincible and all-powerful were really impossible to be around much - certainly then there was little contact between us as friends - followed by weeks of feeling so down and exhausted.....:-(

I supported her when she asked me what I thought about medication or not (her husband understandably wanted her on something...anything almost!) - but I supported her in trying psychotherapy without drugs, especially kwowing that lithium gave her adverse reactions, and that she desperately wanted to avoid ANY meds....

After several years of lessening extremes of mood swings, she is doing much better now, and this without meds.

So, I agree that meds can help some people, but not all, and perhaps it IS possible for many BPs to learn to deal with the powerful emotions, but this will take time...years even... something people may not be able to take in our society at this time.

DemEx

[DemExpat]

11. I do agree that untreated manic-depression might be impossible

to heal left to take its own course, but the choice is between meds and other therapies. imo.

:hi:

DemEx