It is through education and relating to others living with this illness that can help us to heal.

“I may have Bipolar, but it doesn’t have me.”

Sharon

Matt, thanks for putting this up, it is eye opening, and for those of us who have been involved with someone with the disease it is comforting to see that their are success stories out there.

it takes brave souls to change attitudes and feelings about things that are stigmatized and misunderstood.

it’s astounding how many brilliant minds deal with this disorder, but also equally amazing the products of their struggles. seems like an inordinately high price to pay for the contributions these people make, and have made, to our lives.

thank you for sharing this and your deeply personal feelings.

No, you are correct about norepinephrine. It makes sense really because when your sympathetic nervous system is aroused like you would expect in a manic state, norepinephrine levels would hit the roof. But yea, serotonin does increase. This article: http://www.breggin.com/31-49.pdf has a little bit of what I mentioned earlier about SSRI induced mania. It happens quite frequently because often people are misdiagnosed with just depression and then given anti-depressants, specifically SSRIs. And here: http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/display.cfm?ID=20060209190055 under the heading “Effects of high serotonin levels in various illnesses” you can find out a little bit about it.

I was disagreeing with that point! As far as I know, the low serotonin levels remain constant during depressive and manic episodes. What I was getting at was norepinephrine, another neurotransmitter, is low during depression but high during mania. But, I’m not an expert by any means and merely want to inform anybody who wants to know more about BP with as much information as I have. [So this could be inaccurate :-p]

I meant too associate low serotonin levels with both unipolar and bipolar disorder. The depression in both conditions is the same. However there are elevated levels of serotonin during the manic episodes. Or were you not disagreeing with me on that?

Lithium Bicarbonate is the usual recommended pharmacological treatment. [Though with side-effects - some have reported of a dampending of all moods.]

There are low serotonin levels for both Unipolar and Bipolar Disorder. Norepinephine appears high during manic states [though low in MD], which suggests its involvement. Though as I’ve pointed out above, new research suggests an inbalance of chromosome 11q24.2.

There is definately a difference between the normal ups and downs of life and what a person affected by the disorder feels. Having been a sufferer of the disorder for a few years I can tell you that what I used to go through as a teenager, before I started having symptoms, was nothing like now. Most of the time there is no rhyme or reason for feeling hypomanic or feeling depressed…it just happens, literally for no reason at all. Then if something on top of that goes wrong in your life it can really destroy you.

It’s really hard to explain, but the difference between a normal person’s ups and downs and someone’s with Bi-Polar is very substantial.

I’ll clarify a few things here. First, hypomania is defined as a state of elation lasting 4 or more days that is not as severe as mania in that it does not cause sufficient social impairment (i.e.you can still work and be social etc.). The key thing about the symptoms of hypomania is that it is a change in mood from when you aren’t symptomatic.There are a few other symptoms/signs there but that is th gist of it.

“Life in and of itself is up and down.”

Yes, but an up phase in life is vastly different from a manic episode. For instance, an “up” period in life might mean that your getting married and graduating with a degree. A period that you would probably find happy and would probably cause you to have an elated mood (albeit stressed at times) so you may find yourself on the go and busy in a great mood talking to lots of people or what have you. A manic episode, in contrast is characterized by somewhat eccentric behavior. During mania, the person may not sleep for 6 or 7 days at a time. Grandiouse thoughts race through their mind. A good example was in that clip when carrie fisher said “everybody wants to be with you and loves you, they play songs for you on the radio”. During a manic episode, somebody may actually believe, whole-heartedly, that the song on the radio is being played for them. And keep in mind that while life has its ups and downs, bi polar disorder tends to cycle through.

Did that help clear things up a bit yarrowrowan?

and also, I-Am-The-Walrus:

Just because you have only presented symptoms for the past three years does not mean it is not something to take note of. Bi-polar disorder is early onset typically in adolesence or early adulthood. If you are truly concerned that there may be something there, there are plenty of people out there to help. You can ask your doctor or psychologist about it for more information and a proper diagnosis.

In my business “friends� come and go, as do others. They claim not to use you, to be there for you, and when the time comes they aren’t. That’s just the way it is I’m afraid. When the band broke up, and there wasn’t money in it for those that had made a living from it, my list of friends became almost non-existent.

This statement reminds me exactly of what happened to me at about 18 years of age. Until then I was a big-time dope smoker, etc. I always had a big bag of the stuff. The friends were plentiful. Always calling to see what I was up to. You know where I’m going with this. Well, I quit one day and the phone stopped ringing. There would be a big party somewhere around the little hole in the ground town I lived and I’d hear about it the next day. No-one would call me to tell me that night where it was at. I had no dope to share.

I later moved, obtained an education and got my life together. One of those guys is now dead due to a heroine overdose a few years back. Some of the others have had major hard drug addictions, etc.

Life in and of itself is up and down. There are some things which are moderately stable, but still the bottom can and does drop out of some things.

At what point do you become mildly bipolar(hypomania) or type II as opposed to someone who has been badly burned by difficult life situations and not ready to jump back in the shark tank until the chummy waters clear??

Know what I’m trying to say?

Glad to hear your doin alright Matt!

Bi-polar disorder comes in 2 different forms:

Type 1: Essentially Mania, with or without major depressive symptoms.

Type 2: Hypomania (which is a less severe form of mania) with major depressive episodes.

Basically people move through extreme points in mood where they will be, in the case of type 1, extremely manic. They will have inflated self esteem, grandiouse thoughts, won’t be able to stop talking, etc. On the other extreme (if they have the major depressive symptoms) they will hit emotional rock bottom and become lethargic, unmotivated, sad, have recurrent thoughts of death and suicide. They tend to cycle through these moods sometimes hitting the whole range within one day (called a mixed episode). A lot of the cause of it comes from an imbalance in neuro transmitters. Serotonin is a big one. People with low serotonin levels become depressed. Some research has also shown a big spike in serotonin when the switch from depresson or normality to mania comes. There is a third disorder in there as well called cyclothmia which is cycles of hypomania with the equivalent in depression. So people go from being slightly depressed to slightly manic.