Hi there everyone.........I have never posted here before but I wanted to share events that have unfolded with my 15 yr. old daughter over the last year.
I don't know how much you guys know about a possible infectious cause that could underly psychiatric diseases like bi-polar, OCD, anxiety and depression. Heck not long ago I didn't know a thing about anything!
about a year ago my daughter started having changes in her personality (what 14 yr old doesn't) She used to be happy go lucky, had many friends, did well in school.....etc. You get the idea.
She began to be really oppositional, rage with anger, have peer problems, engaged in behavior that was way out of her norm. She was constantly ill with one bout of walking Pneumonia and 5 bouts of strep throat in 4 months.
Things got bad enough in the family dynamic that we sought family counseling. It put a huge strain on all of us. The counselor recommended we see a psychiatrist and to make a long story short they thought she was probably bi-polar (quick cycling) with depression and anxiety thown in for good measure. The doc put her on resperdal, but after that didn't seem to do much she tried zoloft and now we added zyprexa. Things have improved very much.
Now here's the reason I'm writing this. My family had two members get lyme disease. My husband and youngest daughter. I never thought too much about our 15 year old. She didn't seem to have any symptoms......Until she came home from school one day and told me about random pinchy feeling she had (like an insect biting her) but there were no bites or bugs. She also described a warm water sensation running down her leg. Also some shooting pains in her neck. There were other things like a squeezing pain in her groin at night. She also related some OCD behaviors, racing thoughts and face flushing so severe that unbeknownst to me her French teacher had sent her to the nurse during class because she was alarmed.
Everything she expressed seemed rather "neurological" in nature and this got my attention. I thought, "could she have lyme?" I said to her, "but you never had a tick bite" With that she replied, "YES I did---remember after girl scout camp, you pulled one off of my chest" Well a hammer hit me over the head with that reply. She did indeed have a tick bite and even had sore knees for awhile after that that I wrote off the "growing pains"
Well with the help of our local Psychiatrist we had a lyme western blot run at Igenex labs (a specialty tick borne illness lab in Ca) and it came back positive. Since then she has tested positive for Bartonella- a bacteria that is also transmitted by ticks at the time of the bite. Bartonella is well documented at causing rage and neuro psych issues.
With some prodding my daughter agreed to be treated for lyme----she was so oppositional that she even said< "**** no I am not getting treated--you are all crazy." When she saw her test results and was educated a little more she is now onboard.
Now, I am not saying that everyone's bi-polar, anxiety, rage, depression etc is caused by a bug, but I am quite certain that there are virtually no Psychiatrists who use lyme in their differential diagnosis protocols. And they should.
Here is the website of the Psych that we ended up taking our daughter to (she is coordinating her treatment with our local Psych).
http://www.thehumansideoflyme.net/ Anyone wanting to learn more should look at her site. I think it actually saved my daughter's life and our family life.
Here is also a link to a brochure called, "What Psychiatrists should know about Lyme disease" It's in PDF and sorry I don't know how to post and attachment.
http://www.ilads.org/PsychiatristBrochure.pdf
I apologize for the length of my posting 
I tried to be a succinct as possible.