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A Bit of Personal Background Re: Bipolar Disorder
An introduction to My BPD Story
Date: 1/20/2008 10:47:10 PM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 1062 times
1.1 This is both a longitudinal account, going back to my conception in October 1943, and a short term account taking in my most recent experiences in the last ten months(4/07-1/08)with manic-depression(MD) or bipolar disorder(BPD) as it has come to be called in recent years. this seems like an appropriatepost to begin this blog.
Some of the personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in the relationships of my family of birth and of marriage, of work and now of retirement are discussed in this document. I also include some discussion of: (a) 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 (b) my wife’s illness and my/our many moves and activities over the years on the other. This lengthy account should provide: (i) 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; and (b) those assessing my suitability for work or for public or private office with a useful document for making their decision about my capacity to take on the task/responsibility an informed one.
1.2 Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists and/or 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; others try to work things out themselves and there are, of course, various combinations of the two approaches. Many 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 nearly 20,000 words and forty-seven A-4 pages(font 14) is part of: (a) my own small part in reducing the damaging stigma associated with BPD and (b) 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, as I say, of forty-seven 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 of sites dealing with depression(D), MD and BPD, (c) some of my relatives, 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, voluntary organizations, interest groups and Baha’i institutions who require such statements for reasons associated with our relationships and interactions; 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 six decades.
1.4 This document, this statement, originally written as a first edition in 2003 has been revised many times after further reflection. Now in its third edition and the 17 draft of that 3rd edition, 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, this document is an ongoing and changing entity as my experience of the disorder continues into my sixties.
1.5 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, except as a participant at a number of internet sites concerned with relevant mental health topics and with people who cross my path serendipitously with various related problems. This long piece of writing, too long for some perhaps for most, not as sharply focussed on my actual experience as some respondents on the internet have already indicated and not particularly relevant to the experience of others in an illness that has a very wide range of behavioural typicalities, 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.
1.6 After more than 60 years of dealing with this medical problem in my private and public life, I would be only too happy to put it to bed, to put it into some final corner and forget it. Sadly, or perhaps fortuitously, 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. I have also become more conscious, as I have come out in the last few years, of how this statement has come to be of great help to many, especially at the 75 mental health sites on the Internet where I place all or parts of this document.
1.7 I have italicized some of the more important sections toward the end of this document to assist those who are busy and not inclined to read a long statement like this. This italicization will assist such readers in: (a) making whatever assessment they need to make of this account, (b) finding out whatever information they desire that is relevant to their particular situation and (c) deciding what my present psycho-emotional state is in order to understand why I do not want to: (1) be employed/work in some job, (2) serve in some volunteer organization or (3) take on some task, some apparently simple activity, that I have been asked to take on.
2. My Experience of Manic-Depression:
Phase One--The First 37 Years 1943 To 1980
2.1 In the first 37 years of my life I had many episodes of various kinds of emotional imbalance or disorientation, themselves of varying lengths and intensities, ranging from a euphoric, impetuous, expansive or high mood to a depressed, gray, low energy or despondent mood. Indeed the range of mood in these 37 years was much more extreme than that indication in this last sentence, but the complete/extreme range was rarely experienced. Sometimes these symptoms affected my day-to-day life severely and negatively and sometimes the affect was non-existent, 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.
2.2 At the time I was in the process of treatment by a psychiatrist in Launceston Tasmania. I had often been on the fringe of this disorder, 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. But in 1980 the symptoms were extreme and required hospitalization. The treatment regime in 1980 was lithium carbonate, an antimanic medication. Lithium was the first really successful mood stabilizer used by doctors to treat MD, for an illness that in the 1990s began to be called BPD.
2.3 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. As I indicated above I have written a more detailed account of these years but this outline, this brief sketch here, of particular episodes and the periods between episodes will suffice. My experience of these highly diverse emotional and psychological swings of mood in everyday experience away form the norm, from my norm, is only part of my story. But it is a crucial part. Everyone has their story for everyone experiences all sorts of abnormal eccentricities and health problems in life, some people of course more than others and some more traumatic and intense than others.
My account of those years from 1943 to 1980 follows. I try, in writing about and in summarizing these first 37 years of my life, not to overstate my case, nor to understate it, but give an account of those first 37 years which I refer to here in this general statement as phase one of my bi-polar life.
2.4 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 and raises privacy issues for some readers and for people in my own past who might not want to be mentioned. This question of confidentiality and privacy is especially true at some internet sites where posts are rejected if names are included in any posting at the site concerned---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 and after so much of my experience and so many of the people concerned are now, what you might call, ancient history.
2.4.1 I certainly appreciate the medical and clinical work of: (a) several of the doctors I went to in my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, (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 me ride the waves when the disorder raised its head yet again along the way, the road of life.
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