Bipolar Diagnosis

I never had a whole lot of confidence in psychologists, psychiatrists, biblical counselors, or anyone else in the mental health field until I was well into my forties. I grew up in the 70s and 80s when the scientific study of the human brain and human behavior was at best experimental.  Many mistakes were made in those days by well-meaning mental health professionals, and sadly much to the detriment of the patient, and sometimes to the family. In my case it was both.

Throughout my life, from childhood to adulthood I visited a handful of psychologists and psychiatrists, and two bible-based counselors. Each one listened to my story, determined something was wrong, but except for one, not one of them could tell me I was bipolar. Maybe I did not give them enough time to figure me out, because the one who did spent the better part of a year with me sorting out the pieces of my life. But in the early days of evaluation what little information that could be gathered lent itself to mere speculation. In my elementary school years my parents were blamed. In my teenage years my behavior was blamed on the way I was raised in my elementary years. As an adult doctors and counselors blamed it all on the emotional and spiritual baggage I was carrying around with me.  One psychiatrist even came close to finding a diagnosis, saying I had mood swings, and prescribed medication to help control them, but that was not enough to effect a positive change.

One reason doctors had such a difficult time understanding my behavior and giving me a proper diagnosis was, because up until 1980 anyone with any type of mood disorder was simply labeled manic depressive. At that time the term bipolar disorder started being used and distinction was being made between full blown mania and hypomania. For me, however, and anyone growing up in the 80s with Affective Mood Disorder, the matter was further complicated, because it was not until the end of the 1980s that doctors began making a distinction between adult and childhood bipolar disorder. The reason why this was messy was, because anyone born in the mid to late 1960s was during this time of enlightenment coming into their adulthood. Therefore, doctors evaluating teenagers in late adolescence and early adulthood were just beginning to get a firm grasp on the evolution of the disorder. In other words, many doctors did not even realize how the disorder was changing, and the effects those changes were having on those of us trying to make sense of the hell in which we were living.

For me that early diagnosis was simply that I had mood swings, which was so obvious a child could have come to the same conclusion.  And so I slipped through the cracks and went untreated and improperly diagnosed for another twenty years. During this time I was verbally abusive to my wife and my children, perpetually depressed and suicidal, unable to hold a steady job, and headed for a breakdown. Thankfully, I did have a complete and total breakdown, for had I not, I would have never reached that rock-bottom point in life where I had no other choice but to seek help, and subsequently, finally get diagnosed as Bipolar II.  My counselor, Jerry, being a brilliant man did what others could not do and put the pieces of my life together and came to conclusion that my problems were not much behavioral, as they were the sum total of a mental illness that I had been living with my entire life.