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Bipolar Disorder
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Posted 4/17/2007 3:41 AM (GMT 0)
Is depression or bp caused by our genes or the human conditioning of tough life? I've always pondered the question...  I know many friends who had tough times, get the blues, or experience extreme highs. Do they need a pill? I have thoughts about death, morbid thoughts about life, sleepless nights, and can get zy too, does that mean I need a pill? How are we to know what constitutes real DNA depression from hard life depression?

Just a thought to toss

Posted 4/17/2007 4:11 PM (GMT 0)
That is a good question. In my situation I think it's the genes. When my Dad was around 22 he had his first panic attack and was later diagnosed w/ manic depression. He's fought depression & had panic attacks that eventually turned into agoraphobia.

I've been diagnosed w/ Panic Disorder, OCD and Bipolar II and I definately think it's from my Dad's genes and so does my Dr. He won't even prescribe me anything that my Dad had a bad reaction to because they think it may affect me the same way. But I also think having traumatic things happen to us do not help what we go through, and probably make it worse.

But thats just my experience.

Posted 4/18/2007 2:33 AM (GMT 0)
william,

zomese may be right.  i, however, have a different take.  this is the age old question of nature vs nurture.  durinf the victorian age (believe it or not, that was before my time :-) ) they organized elaborate experiments to deermine the answer.  here in the states during (i think it was) the 1920s, there was a girl who was a living experiment.  She was housed in a mansion with servants, exercised daily, and provided with the best tutors that money could buy.  her food menu would emeral lagarse green with envie.  i heard about this experiment sometime in the 1950s.  she was nmarried with a couple of kids and living what she described as a "normal" life.  result of the experiment?  who knows.

i personally believe that nature provides the potential for something to happen.  Nurture realizes this potential or doesn't.  as DAMD CAN'T THINK OF THE NAME!@!!! says to marcus in julies ceasar, act 1, "men at times are masters of their fate."

nature dealt all of us a hand of cards.  it's how we play them that matters.  remember the song, "the gambler?"  every hand's a weinner and every hand's a loser.  and the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

i pray to all the gods above and beliow that i have played my hand well anad will die in my sleep.

warren

Posted 4/18/2007 4:07 AM (GMT 0)
Thanks Warren, Nature has a way to cause such problems. ha. As far as Zomese, you have a point. If your passing bad genes at birth, and dont have the right nurture- (warren) life is not good.
What did people do before the mystery of science?
Posted 4/18/2007 3:02 PM (GMT 0)
 

I just have to comment on this.  I married my husband 41/2 years ago knowing that his father was a little nutty and on medicine for mental problems.  I didn't know that bipolar ran in the family.  Now I know that 5 known generations have had mental illness (all bipolar with a little OCD thrown in for good measure).  Had I known the risk I was taking by getting involved with him, I might would have walked away.

Joe has 3 brothers.  One of them is bipolar, another has suffered from depression without the rages, and the other is O.K. so far.  My husband was diagnosed at age 48, but had had mild symptoms for many years. He is the oldest brother so who knows what the future holds for the other 3.  I would be terrified, if I were they.

Life has been rough to my beloved husband.  A son was left severely brain damaged by a horse accident and also paralyzed.  He will be institutionalized for the rest of his life.  Also, a tree fell on my husband 4 years ago and crushed a vertebrae, etc.  He lives with back pain.  Add a nasty divorce and kids who won't acknowledge that he is even alive.  He was a bipolar explosion waiting to happen.

He is disabled mentally and cannot work.  He's on 9 drugs now including 2 for cholesterol.  He was on nothing when we met 5 years ago.  This assortment causes him to sleep up to 14 hours per day.  Something has to be adjusted.  THe PDoc is afraid to change anything because he may become unstable.  He can stay unstable for extended periods of time.  The lithium seems to be the most effective drug in the mix right now. His mania is violent to the point of nearly murderous.

Any comments?

 

Posted 4/19/2007 8:01 AM (GMT 0)
My therapist kind of tried to explain it where it made sense to me - I will give the short type here.

She said - thoughts, emotions, actions, speech, feelings, and our predisposition of the disorder, medications -- all these things effect eachother. She put a circle up on the board and put each of these words around the outside of the circle. Then she put arrows going from one thing to the other until it went all away around the circle. Basically the point is that by trying to control these things it will help control everything else. Example:

there is the chemical disorder, effects our thoughts, which effects our emotions, which effects our actions, which effects our feelings -- which can come full circle and effect the disorder (good or bad)

By controlling our thoughts or actions or whatever it can in turn effect the severity of the symptons felt from the disorder --- which I guess goes back to the original post

I believe it is 50% cognitive and 50% physological

maybe that helps maybe not
Posted 4/20/2007 3:23 AM (GMT 0)
mental illness runs everywhere in my family, as does child abuse.  Thus us purelypersonal, but i wouldn't subject any entity to the hells that my life has been.  the mental illness and the child abuse stop here.  i made this decision before i knew i had bp and thought that it was "just" chronic depression and child abuse (which is also passed down from generation to generation).

there is a branch of behavioral psychology known as neuro linguistic programming (nlp) which, anoungstother things, teaches a person to "act as though" and eventually the behavior will help shape the thoughts and the illness.  i have used this technique frequently and found that it helps a lot.  the science was founded by richard bandler and gene laborde.  their first book is entitled "magic demystified."  a populariser of the technique is tony robbins.  one of his books is "personal power."  i highly recommend this behavioristic approach to anyone who needs help.

warren

Posted 4/24/2007 3:29 AM (GMT 0)

Right on! Please post your message on the infidelity post created by destiny.

Thanks

ALsooner said...
My therapist kind of tried to explain it where it made sense to me - I will give the short type here.

She said - thoughts, emotions, actions, speech, feelings, and our predisposition of the disorder, medications -- all these things effect eachother. She put a circle up on the board and put each of these words around the outside of the circle. Then she put arrows going from one thing to the other until it went all away around the circle. Basically the point is that by trying to control these things it will help control everything else. Example:

there is the chemical disorder, effects our thoughts, which effects our emotions, which effects our actions, which effects our feelings -- which can come full circle and effect the disorder (good or bad)

By controlling our thoughts or actions or whatever it can in turn effect the severity of the symptons felt from the disorder --- which I guess goes back to the original post

I believe it is 50% cognitive and 50% physological

maybe that helps maybe not

Posted 4/24/2007 3:36 AM (GMT 0)
There is actually a genetic component to a lot of things like bipolar, depression and other mental illnesses.  They did a twin study with bipolar disorder.  They found that identical twins where one twin had bipolar disorder, the chances that the other twin having it were about 80%. (I am not sure of the exact percentagees, but this is close).  In non-identical twins the chances of both having bipolar were about 24%.  In the general poplulation the incidence of bipolar is only 1%.  They say bipolar is genetic.  However, there are environmental triggers that can set off the bipolar disorder.  So, maybe not everyone with the gene expresses bipoar disorder.
Posted 4/24/2007 3:42 AM (GMT 0)
True, I know some folks that can show signs of high/low manic behavior caused by environmental triggers, but never get tagged as BP.
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