Bipolar Land
Many of you know that I have recently discovered that it's more than my imagination that's been blocking my path to getting organized. My husband doesn't just have mood swings and tantrums, he has major depressive and manic episodes. Here I've been living in a foreign country, dealing with a serious mental illness and I didn't even know it. I knew that he could be a great help sometimes and other times he could trash the house and our life and not even realize he was doing it. Well, now I know.
I've started a booklet on living with a bipolar spouse that I'd really appreciate any feedback about. The booklet is Love Has Its Ups and Downs. It will be available soon from Lulu.com in paperback form, but it will always be here to download free in the most updated version.
Remember, this is a work in progress--I will post updated versions as I have time. (updated 1/23/09)
I have a new booklet started that has ideas for living with less time and money. It was started as part of the home organization topic, but it seems that if you live with a bipolar spouse, time and money are both at a premium, so it also fits here. This is a first round rough draft, so I only have it in Word for now. If you want a PDF version, I can email you one.
(The bipolar spouse booklet is available in Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Word. You can download free readers for either version, but you probably have one or both already .
If you do not have MS Word and you want to read Word documents, you can get this viewer to read the booklet. After downloading and seting up the viewer (just click run at the prompt) you will have to click to get the booklet and press save and it will ask where, just click on desktop. Now that you have the viewer and the booklet on your computer; click "start" , "All programs" and look for "Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003" and click. the viewer is now started. Click "file", "open", click on desktop and click on booklet.) This booklet will soon be available in print at www.Lulu.com.
I have also started a blog at
http://getolife.blogspot.com which will have new articles that are not in the current edition of
Love Has Its Ups And Downs, but may be included in future editions.
What is mental illness
The more I looked at it, the more I realized that undiagnosed and untreated mental illness--either in yourself or in your family members, could be a major roadblock in achieving all sorts of goals. I also learned that depression is fairly common and that bipolar depression, while not as common, is still more common than I would ever have imagined. If you are struggling with organization and not getting answers anywhere else, it's time to check your life for...
Symptoms of Depression
I bet you think that depression is pretty obvious--someone who is crying all the time about nothing, right? Actually, that's a pretty rare form of depression. The symptoms you are more likely to see are
Sleeping more than usual
Lack of interest--if you are bored with things that used to excite you, you may be depressed
Suicidal thoughts--if you think you'd be better off dead or your family would be happier without you.
Eating more or less than usual--depends on the person
Headaches, stomachaches, general feelings of illness unrelated to any medical condition
There are other symptoms, but these give you a start. If you see any of these symptoms in yourself, especially if this has been going on for more than a few months, it's time to see a doctor and find out if there is something more that could be done.
What is Psychosis
I think there is a fine line between the types and levels of psychosis. There can definitely be a psychotic (disconnected from reality) component to plain old bipolar disorder (if there really is such a thing). Generally, in bipolar, the psychosis is cyclic and the person eventually comes out of it and may not remember what happened during it.
From what I understand, schizophrenia is getting stuck in psychosis and not cycling out of it without some outside influence-usually medication. Of course, how long you have to wait is pretty subjective and sometimes a psychotic bipolar mania can seem to go on forever.
Multiple personality disorder is a form of psychosis where a person has more than one distinct personality-sometimes with different names, different habits, different voices, etc. Right? But where do you draw the line? How distinct do the personalities have to be? Does it matter if they have shared memories?
In the books I've read, MPD was a coping device for traumatic experience, whereas bipolar seems to be more chemical/ medical and less experiential. But I guess that is open to interpretation, too.
Now, at the poles in bipolar, when the person might experience psychosis, there is a sort of shift in the personality, though usually not a big enough shift to compare to mpd. Still, in psychiatry, everything is pretty much relative. When I see Jekyll and Hyde, I see bipolar before I see MPD. But that's just me, and it might have to do with my experiences. Before my husband I was with a violent paranoid schizophrenic who actually looked like a different person when he was out of character-kind of freaky. Was he mpd?
I really don't think so. But then, I didn't believe Troy was bipolar until the doctor pointed it out, and then it was so obvious that I still don't know why I didn't see it