My theory - so often "bipolar" runs in families because parents take their children to the same pshrinks they see, the ones that dx everyone as bipolar, and in addition, if you report to a pshrink that you have a first degree relative that is bipolar, or as Stephany mentioned, alcoholic, you get labeled bipolar, and of course there's the freaky spectrum theory which is partly true, I mean all human behavior really is on a spectrum, not the linear one brain planed pshrinks see, but it's sort of a way of describing the human condition, you know, everyone's more or less upset than they were and more or less upset than someone else, but of course it declares this normal state of being pathology, so that if you buy a new dress, you're about to become that mythic movie bipolar who robs a bank to buy a useless consumer product unless you take your antipsychotic every day.

Reality check, Sally: I know a lot of people who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and none of them got diagnosed because they bought a new dress. (I don't care if your remark was meant to be sarcastic, it's still ridiculous.) Your inability to tell psychotic mania or suicidal depression apart from a "normal state of being" is astounding.

Maybe in your opinion it is a "normal" sign of being "more or less upset" for people to lose contact with reality and kill themselves for no apparent reason; but I'm very grateful that the rest of the world does not agree and never will.

I wonder if we can get un-diagnosed this month.

My neurologist seems to think I should, not so sure about the pdoc. (Haven't seen him yet)

I have epilepsy.

I "wanted" (silly me) some of the stress to go away.
The real madness didn't start until the first SSRI from a GP...so I then went to a pdoc...isn't that what people are supposed to do when they feel crazy? It got worse. After my first visit...he'd increased my SSRI and I got a bonus prize of antipsychotics and more! yay!

This is the "short/after the fact version"

Sorry about your life d

I kind of agree that it can be dangerous to start thinking "mental illness" runs in families. I'm not saying there isn't relevance to a family "legacy" but at the same time let's not think it's the be all and end all when trying to make a "diagnosis." When my daughter was hospitalized, it felt like we were being grilled right, left, and center about every relative from here back to the Mayflower. Heaven forbid if we had any skeletons in the closet because that was sure going to accelerate my daughter's diagnosis into something a lot more serious than it otherwise might be. If I admitted to seeing a counselor even once in my life I was getting tagged with a depressive disorder; an alcoholic grandfather? Watch out! I'm just telling you I don't think it's a good idea to cooperate when they start asking about family histories. The stuff they were trying to drag out as significant when they didn't seem to care at all about the relevance of my poor girl's circumstances as a highly creative, bright twenty something struggling to find herself in a tough work environment -- maybe without the people skills she needed --just makes me cringe now looking back on it.

yeah Sally, they took an old grandfather's alcoholism(a great grandfather to my daughter)and actually convinced me "we've found the answer to your family tree! they were just self-medicating bipolars!". I was a real sucker. I believed it all, same as Philip and Gianna. But in my case I feel responsible, because I was convinced by psychiatrists that affected my daughter's life. She was too. As she went into her teen years, she ran the discussions and they kept on telling her (for example)that she needed those drugs. Then she was afraid to adjust them, or change them.

Mental Health America receives pharma funding don't they?

Garth,

This is how most psychiatrist diagnose bipolar disorder, they ask this question, "have you ever had racing thoughts?" if you say yes, then you're bipolar. Tragically no one kills themselves for no reason. There's always a reason, which is never just a random chemical blurp in the brain. To suggest that that chemical imbalance crap is true is crap. This doesn't mean that one person's suicide is another person's fault, but the divorcing of suicide from human experience is a crime. If the bipolar spectrum is important for you emotionally to hang on to, hang on to it. It contradicts the dsm number approach to classifying mental illness. Here's a weird article about it:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1152341

Sally... Besides the fact that you have managed to twist some of my words in interesting ways, you have managed to ignore the point, as usual. Once again: you keep pretending that all mood states, no matter how psychotic and out-of-control and dangerous they are for the person who has them, are just part of the ups and downs of life. I think that this idea itself is pathological, in the sense that the only way you can hold it is by simply denying certain basic facts about the world, and in the sense that if a substantial portion of our society thought the way you do, it would result in great harm to a great number of people. And since you are very skilled at evading any attempt to get you to face up to those basic facts, I don't see the point in trying any more.

Garth, your verbal abuse indicates your own emotional disturbance. It's not easy for people like you whose entire identity and cause for living is a label assigned to them by a "mental health professional" to face the fact that all mood states, no matter how violent, somehow correlate to some event outside of the person experiencing the mood state. To say otherwise is to take all responsibility for human action off of society and individuals and blame it only on the chemicals in the brains of an underclass of subhuman mentally ill. While you, a person who reveals in your psych label might feel that on the surface this is a good plan, I urge you to examine more closely the thoughts, feelings, and rather offputting rage that you bring to the table.

Sally, in my previous post I pointed out that you failed to answer the point of my previous comment, and why I think your view on this issue is grotesquely wrong to the point of being extremely dangerous. (The same view which, once again, you simply repeated right now without offering the slightest argument or evidence to back it up.) I understand that such comments might be upsetting to you, but they hardly constitute "verbal abuse."

You, on the other hand, have just made all sorts of baseless (and, not that it matters to you, incorrect) statements about "people like me" and my personal identity and emotional health. If that's not verbal abuse, nothing is. And do you really think everyone who strongly disagrees with your fringe opinions about mental health is "emotionally disturbed"? That is pretty funny.

As for my "rage"... Well, I don't think I'm feeling rage. But I forgot - you have the amazing ability to delve into other people's mental states, see past other people's delusions about their own mental states, and tell them what they're REALLY feeling and why. How on earth do you manage to do it?

Garth, I'm still picking up on an angry tone in your post and it does feel abusive to me. I don't think I said anyone was deluded about their mental state. Sorry I got you so upset.

Sally, when you respond to criticisms of your opinions with mean-spirited, ill-informed personal attacks, other people may succumb to the temptation to respond in a sarcastic way. But don't worry, I'm not losing any sleep over anything you have to say.

But imagine how I feel! She didn't call you a psuedo punk.