Bipolar disorder and giftedness

Post Reply New Topic

In my opinion a mental disorders means also a different way of thinking and sometimes this also has advantages upto some degree, especially when it's "just" traits and not a fullflown mental illness.

I write poems, but I usually just write them if something negative happened or to get over a negative event. I usually don't write poems when I'm hypomanic. In my opinion also my "schizo-traits" add to the fact that I'm creative.

But people with "just" traits seem it to have much more easier in my family to do something positive with them. In my case, my mental illness, has many negative side effects, but some in my family make music or write books and have just some traits of being different and can make a lot of positive stuff out of them.

I definitely wasn't bipolar as a child. I'm not saying that nobody is bipolar as a child, but I know I wasn't. My first swings happened when I was a teenager.

While your Seroquel may very well be causing processing problems, Jamison's text also is just hard to read sometimes. Not her textBOOK (the fabulous Manic-Depressive Illness she co-authored with Goode), but her novels. I loved An Unquiet Mind, but it was hard to get through at times. Jamison has a tendency to use flowery, overadvanced words that sometimes detract from the main point.

As far as theories for mania's causes, the glucocorticoid/phosphatidylinositol theories are the best ones out there at the moment, in my opinion. There's strong evidence that lithium's main anti-manic action is by inhibiting a key enzyme in the phosphatidylinositol pathway.

I don't know the neurochemistry like you do, but I tend to think that these theories are a neurochemical description of what is happening in the brain during mania, rather than explaining the actual cause. The neurochemical description is actually more important than the cause at the moment. It will help big pharma to improve their products. But I am interested in the why. A successful genetic mutation, creating a predisposition to mania under certain circumstances? A (so far undetected) virus or parasite? Or can it happen to anyone, under the right circumstances?

Believe me, I am anti-"cause" for any neuropsych disorder. I think it's important to understand the "why" to find better TREATMENTS and actually create true diagnostic tests (not screening questionnaires). But I don't think any neuropsych disorder, whether it be schizoprhrenia, bipolar disorder, ASDs, or otherwise, should be flat-out cured. I'm a big believer that, if you take away neuropsych disorders, you will take away the genius that sometimes goes along with them. We need medications for psychosis and the like that don't have horrid side effects and can quell the less-than-ideal symptoms, but we don't need to change a brain that has a unique perspective on life.

Sadly there are given meds way too fast.
It totally brought me out of balance, all this medication and therapy stuff was just way too much for me and so I backed up.
Now I just have a psychiatrist I see all 6-8 weeks and at the moment just valdoxan as a medication.

I have problems, yes of course and sometimes not easy once, but I don't like this desease talk and this psychiatrisation of every behaviour someone has. It make me even more sick than my problems itself.

I also think that if you take away all mental differences from the brain, you'll take away a lot of genius and creativity.
But still, sometimes it is getting "too much".

Seroquel made me a zombie,plus it made the muscles in my legs tense up.And I think it caused a weird little twitch that sometimes happens under my left eye.(why do they always show"disturbed" individuals with a twitch under their eye in cartoons??),then the depakote,start at 500mg,it seemed to help.Then I got revolving psychiatrists,my health care center couldn't keep one,you would see a different one each time.They even flew them in from out of state(no help for the troubled,we get the medical short end of the stick).The next one said 500mg,why that's not enough you need a 1000mgs!!!Guess what the next one did??1500mg.Then I bloated up,my face got round.When I got my Medicaid card the picture didn't even look like me.Then I got vertigo,if I leaned over I'd fall down,and head spins.I didn't feel anything,but duhhhhhhhhh.Quit it,Lamictal next,got a boil and a sore in my mouth,NOT GOOD,a bad side effect,can progress and be fatal.Something that had a generic name like oxycarbomber was next,headaches.I just take anti - depressants and a benzo now.
I have mild mania,so I get bouts of nice euphoria and ideas but I also have days where I just lay there.I allow myself that and don't punish myself with thoughts that I'm lazy,crazy and worthless.Realize that the negative thoughts in my head are not permanent,thoughts are temporarily distorted like fun house mirrors. But it will pass.But I don't have severe mania so I certainly can't tell someone who does to go off mood stabilizers,some people with severe mania may need them to stay out of the hospital.
But I also agree that they overmedicate,I'm lucky now and have a good shrink,he has worked with some of his patients with mild bipolar disorder and taught them ways to deal without being drugged into a stupor.

I waited nearly two years before taking medication - from the onset of symptoms to when I first requested a psychiatric assessment - because I was scared of its impact on my sensitive nervous system. I thought I would try other things, like changing my lifestyle, and seeing a counsellor. In the meantime the illness got worse, destroyed everything in my life, and damaged my brain.

Medications have given me the opportunity to get my life back. Taking them has allowed the other interventions to be more effective. And yes, my sensitive nervous system has been affected, but not quite how I expected. I was worried that they would change "me", and they haven't.

Yes, I reckon one of the biggest mistakes made with treating bipolar patients is this subconscious assumption of similarity in severity (or at least a more restricted range of severity). The actual truth is there is a MASSIVE range of severity when it comes to bipolar disorder, and many people who have it in milder forms probably shouldn't be on medication, or should only be on extremely minimal medication, and should be focussing on lifestyle changes instead.

I'm currently on 300mg seroquel, 900mg depakote, 12.5mg lamictal and it suits me perfectly. I'm on two other meds also. Without them, I am completely f****d (could use nicer language but I think this is the most accurate way of putting it). But this doesn't mean that these meds can't completely screw with other people/have worse side effects than the disorder itself. I do get side effects (the worst being hair loss from depakote, drug induced slumber and agnoizing cramps on occasion (if I forget to drink my usual massive amount of water that day) from seroquel) but they're definitely minor in comparison to the bipolar symptoms I get without them.



This is more like my situation, except i kept assuming all the problems I was having were somehow due to aspergers, plus the mood swings had been happening since I was a teenager and my lack of theory of mind meant that I assumed my internal experience was normal (that everyone experienced intense emotional states the way I did). I went through 7 years of gradually but steadily increasing severity of symptoms and frequency of mood episodes (they started off fairly normal, with me experiencing one or two a year each lasting several months, and then many a year, and then monthly, then weekly, and finally more than once in a day) before diagnosis (although I was misdiagnosed with major depression during that time). By the time I was finally diagnosed and then found a clinician would could properly treat me I had hit rock bottom, spending months and months in ultradian cycling, having dropped out of uni, quit my amazing new singing job, effectively an invalid cared for by my mother. I don't feel my medications have changed me either, I feel they have literally saved my life, not by preventing me from killing myself but by allowing me to live again.