Bipolar Disorder Forum - My Bi-polar Story:part 1

Preamble:

1.1 This is both a longitudinal account, going back to my birth, and a short term account taking in my most recent experiences in the last week or so, of my experience with manic-depression(MD) or bipolar disorder(BPD) as it has come to be called in recent years. Some of the personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in the relationships of family of birth and of marriage, of work and now retirement and particularly some of my personal circumstances as they relate to my values, beliefs and attitudes on the one hand—what some might call my religion as defined in a broad sense and my wife’s illness and my/our many moves over the years on the other, should provide mental health sufferers, clients or consumers, as they are now variously called these days, with an adequate information base to make some comparisons and contrasts with their own situation, their own predicament whatever it may be, and thereby gain some helpful knowledge and understandings.

1.2 Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists, to psychiatrists. Perhaps this is part of a general distrust of certain professional fields in our world today. Perhaps it is part of a general public being more critical. Still others do seek help and try to work things out themselves. They often find the journey through the corridors of mental health problems so complex, such a labyrinth, that they give up in despair. Suicide is common among the group I refer to here—the sufferers from MD and BPD. This account may help such people obtain appropriate treatment and, as a result, dramatically improve their quality of life. I think, too, that this essay of more than 14,000 words is part of my own small part in reducing the damaging stigma associated with BPD and what might be termed “my coming out.”

1.3 The wider context of my experience which I outline here is intended to place my BPD in context and should provide others with what I hope is a helpful perspective, as I say above, in relation to their own condition, their own problems and situations. This essay of some thirty-five A-4 pages(font-14) is written: (a) for doctors and various medical professionals who have dealt with or will come to deal with my disorder and who are now, at this present time, involved with my treatment, (b) for internet sites and those registered/inquirers on the www at a range of health and mental health sites, especially the sections dealing with depression(D), MD and BPD, (c) some of my friends and associations over the years with whom I still have contact in these years of my late adulthood(60-80) and to whom it seemed relevant to give such a statement; (d) for government departments and Baha’i institutions who require such statements for reasons associated with our relationships; and (e) for myself as a reflection, for my own satisfaction, to put into words the story, the results, of an illness, a sickness, a disorder that has influenced my life for over half a century. Originally written in 2003, this piece of writing has been revised many times after further reflection on original and earlier editions and drafts; after feedback from various doctors, friends and internet respondents and after an increase in my own knowledge of the illness as a result of further study.

1.4 I do not claim to possess a specialized and/or professional expertise in the field of the study and treatment of D, MD or BPD. I do not work with people who have such problems, nor do I have a desire to do so. This long piece of writing, too long I’m sure for some, not as sharply focussed on my actual experience as some respondents on the internet have already indicated, is but one of my many pieces of my writing these days. The vast majority of my writing has nothing to do with this disorder. After more than 60 years of dealing with this medical problem in my private and public life I am only too happy to put it to bed, to put it into some final corner and forget it. Sadly I can not do so because I still suffer, even after 60 years, with problems that are part of this disorder’s long history in my life.

2. My Experience of Manic-Depression: The First 36 Years—1944-1980.

2.1 In the first 36 years of my life I had many episodes of various kinds of emotional disorientation, themselves of varying lengths and intensities, varying from a euphoric or high mood to a depressed or low mood. Sometimes they affected my day-to-day life severely and negatively and sometimes the affect was insignificant, hardly noticeable. After many experiences on the fringe of a normality that was my usual modus operandi or modus vivendi, as it is said in Latin , on the fringe of what I saw as my general everyday experience of life, an experience that is sometimes called the quotidian by writers, poets and novelists, I was diagnosed as a MD in May 1980 in the process of treatment by a psychiatrist. I had often been on this fringe, as I say above, a borderline zone, a limen as some historians call it, a border territory, a zone between normality and various behavioural extremes and eccentricities from my birth in 1944 to 1980.

The treatment regime in 1980 was lithium carbonate, an antimanic medication. It was the first really successful mood stabilizer for MDs, for an illness that in the 1990s began to be called BPD. My history to that point had been far from smooth and linear as my remarks above indicate. Those thirty-six years had often been bisected, polarised and traumatised. My particular experience of these all-too-common everyday personal emotional extremes away form the norm, from my norm, is only part of my story. Everyone has their story for everyone experiences all sorts of abnormal eccentricies in life, some people of course more than others and some more traumatic and intense than others.

My account of those years from 1944 to 1980 follows. I try in writing about and in summarizing these first 36 years of my life, not to overstate my case, nor to understate it, but give an account of those first 36 years which I refer to here in this general statement as phase one of my bi-polar life.

2.2 In some ways the inclusion of the names of those doctors who treated me over the years in this first phase and in later phases would personalise this account, but names are not that important and to include them here in this narrative causes confidentiality problems for some readers and for people in my own past who might not want to be mentioned. This is especially true at some internet sites where posts are rejected if names are included in any posting at the site---and so I leave names out. Those whose names I could mention would not be troubled by their inclusion here, not now, not in 2007 after an extensive destigmatization of the disorder in recent years.

2.2.1 I certainly appreciate the medical and clinical work of: (a) several of the doctors I went to in my childhood and adolescence, (b) the psychiatrists who have treated me since June of 1968, nearly four decades ago and (c) many family members, friends, colleagues and associations some known well and others hardly at all, who have helped ride the waves when the disorder raised its head yet again along the way, the road of life.
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