Bi-polar.
Or Manic-Depression.
Catholic Mom of 10 has an excellent post on the subject, detailing both a description of the disorder as well as the symptoms. The subject interests me because I suspect a couple members of my family have suffered from the disorder, such as my crazy mother and my brother who died of complications associated with alcoholism. (Their illness may explain my weird sense of humor.) Neither had been diagnosed with the illness, yet both exhibited manifest symptoms of the disorder. And both my mother and brother self-medicated with alcohol and other things.
In addition, over the years I have worked with several people who had been diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder. I’ve also known a couple of nuns with the problem. All of these people have found treatment and live normal, functional lives, stabilized by medication. I know it is an illness accompanied by great suffering, with extreme mood swings - hence the term, bi-polar.
Most of the people I’ve known are incredibly talented and highly intelligent. Their suffering seems to have provided them with keen insights into human behavior, and as I always say, they were a hoot to be around when they were going into mania, or, as in the case of one friend, when she over-medicated. (Another trait is that they never share their drugs!) However, sometimes the medication produces side effects that are no fun at all.
Because I’ve lived and worked closely with people suffering from mental illness, I have a deeper sympathy for all they suffer. I often wonder if clinical depression, or bi-polar disorder may not be an underlying factor in many people’s alcoholism, drug addiction, even sexual addiction? Which is another reason we ought not to be too severe in our judgement regarding people who exhibit such behaviors. Although that can be difficult to remember if their behaviors somehow adversely affects ourself.
Mental illness and sanctity are not opposed to one another, as can be demonstrated by the lives of some saints. St. Benedict Joseph Labre is considered by some to have suffered from mental illness, and it seems probable that a few of the saints in the Eastern Church have as well, especially those referred to as “Fools for Christ“. The father of St. Therese, Louis Martin also suffered from mental illness towards the end of his life. Some biographers have suggested that Therese herself had some form of it as a child after her mother died and prior to her ‘conversion’ - during her ‘mysterious illness’.
It has been my experience in dealing with friends or employees who have this disorder, that it is important to have the attitude that mental illness is just an illness, much like any other chronic physical illness. (If a person is being treated for it - if they are not, Jackie’s post has some suggestions for what a person can do to help.) Sometimes an employee needs time off from work during episodic events, much as in the case of a person suffering from MS or similar physical illness. I think it is important to have compassion and empathy for the person, without condescending into pity. It is also important to not try and ‘fix them’ by saying stupid things like, “Snap out of it,” or “Get a grip!”
I have found that like all of us, these people need to be treated no differently than any other healthy person, or person with a physical condition. There is still such a stigma associated with mental illness, which I believe is unfair.
After all, mental illness could simply be one chemical imbalance away for any of us.
[Icon: Bl. Xenia of St. Petersburg.]
September 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
My Mom has bipolar.
Unlike your experience with those you love, however, mine was not a “hoot.” Mom was irrational, mean, crabby, hallucinating and had a hair-trigger when she was manic. She rapid-cycled and so crashed often, and when she was depressed she was mean, weird, worried, crabby, irrational, and hallucinating. When depressed, she was just all of those things at a slower pace. And would be hyper in a moment.
My Jr. year of high school, I got called down to the office, and when I got there, Mom was waiting. She had her worried look, was gnawing at her thumb, and as soon as I came in she yanked me into the office hallway.
She’d dropped off a lifeguard app for me that morning, and wanted to know why I’d written across the bottom of the page, “This woman is not my mother.”
“Uh….I didn’t write that. Why would I put that on an application?”
So then she laughed and hugged me desparately as though I was about to get on a jet plane and never come back again (she was the one who had gone bye-bye, though, clearly).
I was completely rattled the rest of the day…but then again, that was every day, living with Mom.
September 1st, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Julie - My mother was like that too - in 3rd grade she tried to slit my throat with a knife, but my sister pulled her away. By high school she was completely nuts - I left home mid year when I was a senior in high school. I know what you are talking about. Her only medication was alcohol.
September 1st, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Wow. Thank God Mom never tried to kill us. I just posted on my experiences with her.
It’s not a complete story, but says enough.
Mom didn’t drink…what a blessing.
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:49 am
Yes lots of my family are alcoholics too..grandparents,uncles,aunts,father,sister, brother, cousins….often there is a dual-diagnosis although most o my relatives would deny they had anything wrong with them..thanks for this post & referring to mine
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:51 am
Oh, Julie and Terry, bless your hearts. I can’t imagine growing up with a parent whose mental illness was that extreme. I always thought my own dear mom, God rest her soul, was nuts when she would go off on her yelling rants at me and my twin sister, but her depression (she had us when she was 45 years old and that surely contributed to the depression) and bad temper were nothing compared to a homicidal maniac! Good Lord. What a miracle that you grew up at all, let alone into the functional, intelligent and spiritual adult that you are!
Do remember to pray for your mom, as I try to always pray for mine. It helps to let go of the hurt when you do.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:58 am
I would urge all interested in this topic to read a little about another disorder that can be mistaken for bipolar and is called Borderline Personality Disorder…(there being a low functional type typified by fast mood swings around the issue of clinging vs. its opposite and a high functional type wherein the person holds a job perfectly and restricts their mood swings to home and sometimes in cycles that cover years rather than minutes as in low functional. Also this disorder sometimes carries with it sexual excess, drinking excess or profligate shopping excess….and is overwhelmingly populated with females victims. Its origin is often thought to be chemical as the latency and then triggered by a traumatic incident with a too rough or abusive father….which explains how three sisters with the same father may not all show problems like this because in two sisters, there was no brain chemical latency preceding the abuse.
The low functional is probably the more typical and a main book on it is “I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me”….and just from the title you can see how your posts above resemble the syndrome of that title.
If you care to investigate, the internet has a number of sites if one googles BPD or borderline disorder.
It probably requires drugs that are not the same as those for bipolar.
The Church historically has not shown great interest in the mentally ill even though Christ showed great interest in the possessed (we don’t to my knowledge have religious orders dedicated to healing or sheltering the extreme cases though our basic soup kitchens take care of them with others on the level of sheer survival).
That is an oddity but I don’t think we show much deference to the aged either compared to some Christian communities that show up in real numbers for the death of any parishioner whatsoever.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:03 am
I posted on Catholic Mom of 10’s original post too, but this topic is too perfect for mentioning my new book. I just released a book called The Depression Advantage that is about how we can find spiritual growth in depression. there are stories of the lives of Saints Francis, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Anthony, and Milarep. For information please visit http://www.depressionadvantage.com
I love the link to “Fools for Christ”
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Bill - Thanks for that information. I now have something new to investigate - I am wondering if may be my brother could have had the disorder you describe, even my mother. They had long periods of normal behavior, and then episodes of the other, which was even more confusing. I’ll read up on it. (Neither ever sought counsel because they thought seeing a psychologist was just for crazy people. Which is what was so funny to me and why I laugh about everything now.)
Thanks Georgette and Tom and all for your comments.
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:04 am
Terry
Very common mix up. I think bipolar also is somewhat seasonal which does not occur in BPD which is more about failure to produce under stress the needed serotonin in the brain to cool one’s anger…. and this can happen of course in any season.
The high functional bpd though can somehow restrict the anti-social behaviour resulting from the serotonin deficit… to those they are intimate with and to those places where their families are…thus they have control over the places in which their outbreaks of rage occur though they do not know all this. They can cycle into growing periods of storm preceding a loss…. of people e.g…..when the children are due to leave home as adults. Thus the normal woman is facing the physical loss of her children, the growing loss of her looks, and the fading of her interest in sex…..all at the same time…but for the high functional bpd mother….this is the perfect storm of losses related to being loved. They do not produce the serotonin level needed to deal with these stressors and the result can be rage. We are helped in overcoming anger by serotonin (nature and grace working together against anger ) and bpd’s don’t process enough serotonin to accomplish that…and so their anger is often blameless in God’s eyes. Just another reason among many that we cannot judge others.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Re the borderlines..they’re the ‘pariah’s’ of mental illness ..& not generally liked by the professionals whereas bps are. That’s even more stigma..& must be awful..i’d like to set up in the future a support group for Catholics with mental illness & their friends & families..a bit like Calix is for Catholic alcoholics. We would need a chaplain, a Church for once monthly meeting, confession & Mass..just an idea of mine..
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
bill bannon ~ There is a huge difference between Bipolar and Borderline, although they often overlap. Borderline is an Axis II diagnosis, meaning it is a personality disorder. Bipolar is a chemical imbalance and is a primary diagnosis listed under Axis I.
They do have some overlapping traits, and often one diagnosis accompanies the other; many of the kids I worked with in the psych hospital were borderlines, and boy, were they especially fun when their personality issues were coupled with bipoloar, or they had facets of other personality disorders to accompany borderline.
Additionally, bipolar is NOT a “seasonal” illness. Someone can have multiple diagnoses, however, so if they happen to suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder along with Bipolar, it can affect their mood swings. There is also rapid-cycling bipolar, which is what my Mom had, and there are forms of bipolar that are a bit more predictable and easier to control because they don’t go as quickly from one extreme to the next.
Be careful not to mix up the different factors in mental illness. There is always an Axis to separate the types of conditions a person is facing.
Axis I is the primary diagnosis: Bipolar, Depression, Schizophrenia, MPD, Dysthymia, etc.
Axis II ~ personality disorders and developmental disorders: Borderline personality, Narcissistic personalily disorder, Oppositional-Defiant personality disorder, Antisocial personality, autism, Down’s Syndrome, and other things first evident in childhood. I believe Asperger’s Syndrome is an Axis 2 diagnosis but might be Axis I.
Axis III ~ Physical conditions or injuries…traumatic brain injury, HIV, leukemia
Axis IV ~ psychosocial stressors, such as a new job, death in the family, etc - important because they could be triggers or part of all of the above.
Axis V ~ level of functioning. Compares from one year to the next where that person is at, and helps establish “baseline”.
All this is in the DSM-IV (or has the DSM been updated again a few times?
One of the things to keep in mind is that often the Axis I and II diagnoses interact, feed into each other, or become the most difficult underlying factor in treating the Axis I. So if someone has an oppositional-defiant personality disorder, that’s going to have to be dealt with in order to treat, say, their depression. And a person with depression who does not have an underlying personality disorder is going to be a blessing to their doctors! LOL!
I’ve read the book you cited, Bill, used it in one of my classes in college since I worked so extensively with Borderlins. Some people call that personality disorder a “crap” diagnosis. But when it’s witnessed in kids as seriously ill as the ones at that hospital…well, for being a “crap” diagnosis, I sure did take a lot of beating by it. And a lot of complete adoration. To be followed by more beatings.
Those kids are messed up. There are functional people with both borderline and bipolar because there are extremes on both ends…mild to severe. But there’s some out there who will never find a midpoint we all like to call “normal”.
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Adoro!!!!! You really know this stuff! I’m all mixed up now! I had no idea there were so many axis points. I know nothing. It was so nice to think that family members were just fun bi-polar people. LOL!
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
I think Louis Martin’s trouble was caused by a stroke.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I have a great devotion to St. Dymphna, the patron saint of those suffering from mental illness. I suffer from depression and have many mentally ill family members. I would greatly welcome a support group for Catholics who suffer from mental illness. Along with my website (Dymphna’s Well) I have a forum on delphi dedicated to mental illness from a Catholic Perspective.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/dymphna/start
Also, was St. Xenia bipolar?
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I don’t know if she was bi-polar or not.
September 4th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Is she a patron of those with mental illness?