Mental Health

Posted on: Sun, Aug 16 2009 4:50 PM

Posted by: RonPrice Posts: 22

           
AN ACCOUNT OF MY BIPOLAR DISORDER

A 66 YEAR CONTEXT: October 1943 To October 2009

BY

RON PRICE: George Town Tasmania Australia
                                      (90 Pages: Font 14—33,000 words)                                  

1. Preamble and Introduction:

1.1 This is a longitudinal, retrospective account going back to my conception in October 1943.  I make reference to a genetic predisposition, a genetic susceptibility, to bipolar disorder(BPD) due to a family history of affective disorder in a first-degree relative, my mother(1904-1978).  She had a mild case of what may very well have been BPD, at least I have come to think of her mood swings as falling into the BPD spectrum during her 75 year life.  Her mood-swing disability was never given the formal medical diagnosis, BPD.  About half of all patients with BPD have one parent who also has a mood disorder.  There is, therefore, a clinical significance in my mother’s mood disorder in the explanation of the origins and diagnosis of my own BPD.  

1.2 The high heritability of BPD has been well-documented through familial incidence, twin and adoption studies.  There is an unquestionable justification for the inclusion of my family in the understanding of my BPD.   No specific gene has yet been identified as the one bipolar gene.  It appears likely that BPD is caused by the presence of multiple genes conferring susceptibility to BPD when combined with psychosocial stressors. I make this point as an opening remark and pass on to my story.
 
1.3 My account also provides a statement of my most recent experiences in the last two years, 2007-2009, with manic-depression(MD) or BPD as it has come to be called since 1980.   Some prospective analysis of my illness is also included with the view to assessing potential long-term strategies, appropriate lifestyle choices and activities in which to engage in the years ahead in the middle years(65-75) of my late adulthood(60-80) and old age(80++), if I last that long.  For the most part, though, this account, this statement I have written here in some 33,000 words is an outline, a description, of this partially genetic-family-based-predisposed illness and of my experience with it throughout my life.

1.4 Some of the personal context for this illness over the lifespan in my private and public life, in the relationships with my consanguineal family(family of birth) and in my two affinal families(families by marriage), in my employment life(1961-2005) and now in my retirement(1999-2009) are discussed in this document.  I include some of what seems to me my major and relevant: (a) 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; (b) family circumstances; for example, my parents’ life, my wife’s illnesses and the life experiences of my three children;   (c) employment circumstances involving as they did: (i) stress, (ii) movement from place to place and (iii) my sense of identity and meaning; (d) aspects of day-to-day life and their wider socio-historical setting and (e) details on other aspects of my medical condition to help provide a wider context for this BPD in the last two years.  

1.5 This lengthy account will hopefully provide mental health sufferers, clients or consumers, as they are now variously called these days, with: (i) a more adequate information base to make some comparisons and contrasts with their own situation, their own predicament whatever it may be, (ii)  some helpful general knowledge and understanding and (iii) some useful techniques in assisting them to cope with and sort out problems associated with their particular form of mental illness or some other traumatized disorder that affects their body, their spirit, their soul and their everyday life.

1.6 This document was originally written in 2001 to assist others in assessing my suitability for: (a) employment, (b) for a disability pension of some kind and/or (c) a volunteer public or private office.  This document is no longer needed for these reasons since I am fully retired from FT, PT and casual/volunteer work and am on two old age pensions.  Although this document no longer serves the purpose of helping others to make the evaluations it did eight years ago in 2001 and make their decisions informed ones; although there is no need for others to assess my capacity or incapacity to take on some task or responsibility, I have kept this original general statement, what was a first edition in 2001 and have extended it to what is now a 7th edition eight years later for other purposes.

1.7  Many do not feel comfortable going to doctors, to psychologists, to clinical psychologists and, more especially, 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, wanting to be more informed and wanting to play more of a role in their own treatments.  People seek help in so many different ways; some try to work things out themselves and there are, of course, various combinations of those who try, those who have given up and those who go back and forth between the two poles of trying and not trying to sort out their disorder.  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 BPD and I could include depression(D) as well as a range of other illnesses and life battles of a traumatic nature.   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 33,000 words and eighty-eight 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.”

1.8 The wider framework 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. Perhaps my statement may help some BPD sufferers describing and understand their personal histories.  My BPD exists on an affective spectrum which is a grouping of related psychiatric and medical symptoms which accompany bipolar, unipolar and schizoaffective disorders at statistically higher rates than  normally exist in the general population.  These disorders are identified by a common positive response to the same types of pharmacologic treatments. They also aggregate strongly in families and may therefore share common heritable underlying physiologic anomalies.

1.9 This essay, as I say, of eighty-eight 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 especially for those who are now, at this present time, involved with my treatment should they find such a statement useful; (b) for the registered users and guests at internet sites dealing with health in general and mental health in particular: BPD, D and Schizo-affective disorder(SAD) among other special illnesses...-Ron Price, Tasmania

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