Bipolar Disorder Forum - Girlfriend With Bipolar Needs Help

Hello. I am new to this message board, but I am familiar with them. I have been doing research on Bipolar Disorder because I want to familiarize myself with its characteristics.

I am 24 years old and I was dating an 18 year old girl for about 6 months. We've recently broke up, but remain friends. I believe she has Bipolar Disorder, or Borderline Personality Disorder, or both. After only a week of dating she let me know that she suspected that she had some sort of mental disorder. At first, I just shrugged it off and felt that I would just try to see how things go. I became attached to her in only a month, since the early going was great. However, after a few episodes I began to wonder about that disorder she thought she had and started looking up information on Bipolar Disorder. After only reading a few pages, I came to the conclusion myself that Bipolar Disorder explains her down to the teeth. She is not taking medication, or seeing a psychiatrist. Her parents are oblivious to her condition as well, and just deem it as a troubled teen who is going through a stage. Little do they know that these stages get worse and can affect her long term planning and goals like college, getting a house, or whatever, and greatly affect her personal relationships with friends and loved ones. Her parents aren’t bad people by any means, but just don’t seem to understand these types of problems. Her father is a little on the strict side, however.

My situation is that I still love her, and she “thinks” that she still loves me. I still care very much about her and want to help her in any way that I can. From here, I need to convince her to see a psychiatrist to possibly get a hold on her mental illness while she is still young. According to her, she had been asking to get help since her freshman year, but her parents didn't think it was necessary. Because of this, she gave up on getting help altogether. Another concern of mine, is that she has been talking a lot lately about suicide. About three weeks ago, she began to cut her arms up in an attempt to heal her mental pain by replacing it with physical pain. This was the first time in about 16 months that she had done this, but the first time I was ever exposed to this type of behavior. The worse things got over time, the more I read about the disorder, helping me understand and cope with all this, rather than blame her own will and confuse what she is intentionally trying to do to me, or what she simply cannot help.

Her close grandfather had passed away about 3 months ago, and from what I understand, the death of a close one can greatly affect her mood, and she can go on an emotional spiral towards the bad. Now although this wasn’t the cause of our break-up, another family member was diagnosed with a deadly illness. If it wasn’t enough that she had lost her grandfather, the recent bad news had really made things hard for us. She claimed that she no longer wants to be loved, so she called it off with me until she gets “better.”

It’s very upsetting that this illness had separated us, when we as the couple had no problems at all. She had been shutting herself off from all her loved ones and hanging out with a bad crowd. I’m afraid that things are going to get much worse since she wants to abuse substances to help her “escape her new mental pain” when I know that it is going to make her situation much worse. How can I convince her to see a psychiatrist or possibly explain the seriousness of this illness to her parents so that something can be done? I don’t want to lose her.

I hope somebody can give me a little insight. I want to help her and be with that wonderful girl that I fell in love with. There must be a way through all of this. I have no problem going through the necessary steps to help her, because I have all the time in the world for someone I care about.