I've wondered about this , too. My daughter had ups and downs, but when the truth came out it was drugs. She is severely depressed when not using but never manic as I understand it. I can't figure out what is drugs and the damage to her brain from drug use. There can't be much unaffected matter left. No help for your question, just venting.

There is a screening that a GP can do to diagnose bipolar. There is also a form of it called rapid cycling that may fit your daughter more closely.

Lithium is still the first course of treatment no matter which type it is.

BTW, drugs and alcohol are often used as self-medication for anyone with a personality disorder.

Here is a link for a interesting article about the cross-over diagnosis between bi-polar and borderline personality disorder.

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=4185

flutter
you did a really good job telling about that. Bi Polar is a chemical imbalance that happens in the brain. My gd cycles very fast when she is not on her lithium. But with the medication she is fairly stable. She had lots of labs in order to decide that she was Bi Polar.

Although have a manic time means alot to different people it could be reckless actions just as much as anything. My friend who has bi polar would go shopping and buy really high dollar items. but at the same time would work numbers over and over in his head. Alot of times you didn't see him manic because he learned to cover that behavior.

Having worked six years on a psych unit, I saw plenty of bi polars. I think it's become a catch all phrase for many. The ups and downs don't have to be drastic and while it may be considered a chemical imbalance, it is possible it is a result of substance abuse which can alter the brain. A psychiatrist has to diagnose it. Flutter, not sure if you meant this but bi polar is not a personality disorder but a mental health code diagnosis. You can have personality disorders on top of being bipolar. My gs's whacko stepmom had numerous things going on, one being a personality disorder of hystrionics which meant she always caused a tornado effect. She would stage things like having the police there when we returned gs from court ordered visit and she would tell police our gs said he didn't want to see us. We found out she spent hours prepping our gs on what to say. It was pathetic. My sil was diagnosed with a personality disorder that resembled schizophrenia but he was not schizophrenic.

There is a series of symptoms with "Bipolar" . My daughter has it, my mother had it, my mother-in-law has it and my husband has it. My understanding from what I have observed is that people take the words "depressed" and Manic" as down or hyper. In my daughter's and my husband's case, their manic phase is that the voices they hear inside their heads from the time thay can remeber, take over. Depression is sleeping lot, lack of interest in anything. My daughter's house was always worse than the usual disaster it usally is. Tired all the time. Manic is trying to drown the voices that talk to her with alcohol weed or whatever so she feels she has control over them.
The hard truth about chemical abuse is that when they start using, thay stop maturity at that point. My daughter started at 16 and has not matured emotionally beyond that point.
Her depression first surfaced in 9th grade. she was diagnosed with untreated ADD and resulting depression. After 2 years of feeling like I was fighting for my daughter's life as I saw her slipping into what I feared was a non-returnable depression, I asked for an adolescent psychiatrist. When we left his office, I was afraid to ask "how was it" but did. she calmly said, "I knew all the answers to his questions." He knew which ones to ask.
I have found that "bipolar" can drive you nuts! Thankfully there are new treatments devloping.
I am a diabetic educator/ I teach people how to measure their blood glucose. It would be so nice for people to measure their neurochemicals and know exactly which ones are off balance and which agent or treatment might help.
Bipolar to me can be like wave that I ride through with my daughter and my husband. When I am fragile, tired and scared for them, it can be like Tsunami.

A general practitioner can diagnose bi-polar by doing a basic screening and prescribe a course of pharmaceutical treatment. I know this because I was in the room with my dd when our gp did the screening on my daughter and prescribed lithium for her rapid cycling bipolar.

If she hadn't responded to pharmaceutical protocol, he would have sent her to see a psychiatrist as well, but my dd didn't like the diagnosis and so she chose to self-medicate.

My daughter has it but in spite of years of 'counseling' and psychiatric analysis when she was a teen, she was not diagnosed until she was 30 years old. After the diagnosis, the light bulb came on and I realized that all of her behavior was classic bi-polar. One of the reasons I have absolutely no time for counselors or psychiatrists - at least none of them in my area. DH has very mild symptoms - not terrible or debillitating most of the time. However, a couple years ago he went through several months where his symptoms were very worrisome - mostly aggravated by stress (his mother died, dad was an invalid needing care, my mother was an invalid needing care, we were under a lot of financial stress, and we're raising our granchild - and he doesn't handle stress very well.) Our health insurance limits us to only one psychiatrist in the entire area. I went with DH to a couple appointments and the guy was totally useless. DH walked in, the guy asked how he was feeling. DH would say something like he wasn't sleeping well, so the guy would hand him several more prescription meds and we were out the door. No advice, no discussions, nothing. DH was on so many meds at once that he was a zombie and he kept getting worse!. I finally conviced him to wean himself off that junk and stop going to the quack. He's fine now.

DD was taking lithium and doing well, but she has no health insurance and owes about $100,000 in medical bills from when she was in an accident, so I know she's not taking it now. That worries me because she self-medicated for years with alcohol and some prescription pills. I think, though, her just being aware of her problem has helped her. She's always known there was something not right, but had no explanation, so her self-esteem was awful. At least now she knows why she feels different and that alone has gone a long way toward helping her cope. She lives 6 hours away and I don't see her that often, but we talk on the phone and email.

As I said, I worked on a psych unit for six years. I learned the psychiatrists are the medical doctors who make the diagnosis and prescribe the meds. They are NOT therapists. You are so right in the lack of insurance coverage for mental illness. HOWEVER, we had a "regular" who came in and was admitted at least twice a year for bi polar. He would mope around the unit showing no emotion. They would try one med and then another. He would be there for at least six weeks each time. How could he do this? He was on Medicaid and they paid everything. One of our nurses had surgery for breast cancer and was sent home with tubes in her side after three days and wound up with infection. He was on unit where she left and still there when she returned to work. There are great inconsistencies. This guy was on social seucrity disability and medicaid. To look at him you w/wonder why. There are also vast discrepancies in therapists and counselors. You can have a phd in psychology or a social worker. Anyone with a degree in history can hang out a shingle and say they are a therapist. I think you are right in that most of the time if we work together we can solve our problems outselves. My caution is to never trust one person. My gs was in group therpay at a community based center and I went to a Parents Anonymous group while he was at his session. He claimed he got nothing out of it but boy, did I learn a lot about behavior, development, brain development and parenting.

I think this is another disorder that is over diagnosed. A very small % of our population has bipolar disorder. Depression, drug use, alcoholism should not be considered bipolar. Children who have a lot of family issues are naturally depressed, hyper, up and down as they have undergone extreme situations. Lithium is the last thing I would give a child. In fact, I had a friend who died from it. His was told to take Lithium for bipolar; well he drank with it! He was not bipolar he simply was an alcoholic, and the doctor misdiagnosed him!

I've been wondering about overdiagnosis, too. I did some checking, and apparently it's much more difficult to accurately diagnose bipolar disorder in children.

I just wonder if too many of us are being taken for a ride...

Hi SaraBT and ALL,

Psychology has fascinated me since the mid-'70's and I've taken college courses and read a lot of information on the topic. I have read thousands of ER crisis and psych charts in recent years.

The available psych research has really changed a lot in recent years, and I admit it, I haven't kept up. I didn't know about the screening tests. Everyone has given some great information on this post.

To respond to flutter1--You have to be careful and ask around, etc. to find a good mental health professional. I'm sure you know that, it looks like you have been doing your homework. However, there is no way a GP would be qualified to make that distinction. They don't have the training. It has to be a psychiatrist--and not all of them are good ones. If the dx came from a family practioner or GP, please get a second opinion, if you haven't already done so!

Like DaisyDuck said, all you have to have is a history degree (or anthropology, or what-ever)--and you can call yourself a therapist. A lot of them are "snake-oil" salesman.


I really question if it's prudent to attach the mental health labels to those with drug abuse histories, because then people feel like they don't have to take responsibility for their actions.

My problem with the psychology field in general, is that it seems to lack a moral compass. Most have a self-centered view. Their mantra seems to be "put yourself first," and "look out for #1"--and to heck with everyone else, or who you might hurt in the process. I have "old-fashioned" values that are diametrically opposed to that perspective. I believe in the "golden rule" and being sensitive to the needs of others.

There are some professional, licensed psychologists and therapists who are part of organizations that promote traditional values. I'm aware of a referral service for (practicing) Catholic psychologists--but I found they are typically located in large cities. http://www.catholictherapists.com

There are probably other christian or other religious-based psychologist/mental health professional organizations as well.

A lot of people just learn to say what the counsellor wants to hear, too. We know an addicted person is a master at lies and manipulation.


We are the ones picking up the pieces and trying to hold it all together. It's a huge load to carry. That's why we're all here. Thank God--and all of you--for that support!!!!

Great post MKathy. I hate to put a damper on some of your words but going through any church may be the worst thing. Priests and ministers have taken advantage of those in need to satisfy their perversions and many have gone into their field because they are trying to hide from solving their own problems (kinda like psych). I think the truely needy mentally ill need to be hospitalizied and have a psychiatrist (med doc) who can prescribe meds as well as a therapist that can work with them on their problems. The unit I worked on had mandatory group sessions on communication, anger and stuff like that where patients helped each other. I totally agree with you on not mixing mental illness with substance abuse. Two totally different categories, though they may look similar. The vast majority of homeless people are mentally ill and/or substance abusers. One has to value life if they want to get better. Cancer patients have gotten better without the benefits of chemotherapy yet chemo saves others. Dieters, for the most part, go up and down, "falling" off their diets when they are under stress. Smokers start up again when under stress. ALL of them say that if they didn't have problems they would be thin, quit smoking, doing drugs. I grew up watching my mom, dad and gram pick up my grandpa on a regular basis from hospitals, bars, the street, police, whereever. He went through rehab numerous times. Each time he got himself clean for a short time and then went off again. He was about 65 when he was diagnosed with cancer of the epiglotis (that littlle lever in your throat) He could not eat so they put a tube down his nose to his stomach and my gram had to spoon baby food down the tube to save him from starvation. He actually asked her to pour a beer down the tube. He obviously saw no value in life and didn't care how he hurt those who loved him. Therapy is not "the answer". Medication is not "the answer". They have to find the answer within themselves.

By the way, we used to refer to Borderline Personality Disorder as "they don't give sh.***" because none of them cared how they were hurting their loved ones anymore than they cared about how they were hurting themselves and yes, that diagnosis usally goes hand in hand with bipolar.

I guess what I'm asking (pleeeeease don't jump all over me) is if, because we're raising children born to drug/alcohol addicts, healthcare professionals are assuming certain things?

If a "regular" child gets antsy, for example, a pediatrician may just say it's a stage. But if a child born to an addict gets antsy, that same doctor may suspect ADHD or bi-polar.

I'm just curious if that could be happening, that's all....

I'm afraid the simple fact is that there could be brain damage from the mother doing drugs, alcohol, whatever while she was pregnant. When crack cocaine became the drug of the day they had many babies being born from cc moms but didn't know the damage until the kids were starting school and found they ALL have some damage. When I owned my nanny agency, I had a couple hire a nanny for the seemingly sweet little boy who was eventually diagnosed with "explosive disorder". He would go into rage and attack anyone in range. He would also try to bang his head into the stone fireplace. He w/have to be restrained by the parents or the nanny during these episodes. The nanny left shortly after his sixth birthday when he took a knife and tried to stab her. They had adopted him from a cc mom. Now, this is the extreme but even minor damage to some areas of the brain can cause behavior problems. I think they know it happens but they don't yet how significant it is. Hope this helps.