Bipolar support thread

PoisonousKisses

Hi Im new here

Ive got Bipolar, I work full time and manage my illness with minimal medication. I used to be on DLA and have a mental health team however I discharged myself. I suffer more with Mixed Episodes with Psychosis but have the depressions/manias too.

*Waves*

rubytuesday

PoisonousKisses wrote: »

Hi Im new here

Ive got Bipolar, I work full time and manage my illness with minimal medication. I used to be on DLA and have a mental health team however I discharged myself. I suffer more with Mixed Episodes with Psychosis but have the depressions/manias too.

*Waves*

:hello: I'd forgotten about this thread! You're doing well! Well done! x

raverminx_2

Thought id say hello too! was diagnosed last year after a hospital admission, ive known ive had it for years tho. stupid doctor wouldnt listen and instead increased my antidepressant which sent me manic and landed me in hospital!:wave:

abc1989

Hi,

I need some advice please.

I started a relationship someone who suffers from mild-bipolar.
Everything was going great until Sunday when that spark had gone, the honeymoon period had gone (as like every relationship)

During the week I recieved a text message to say that he needed to talk to me, and by those words everyone knows what that means, its over

I met up with him for him to explain that he felt too comfortable and its not what he wanted (At the beginning I didnt want a relationship and he pushed for it-and wanted a relationship) However while I was speaking to him - it didn't feel like it was him it seemed I was speaking to a different person at some parts. He was alot more upset than I was that it was ending. Im rather concerned for him (He has a history of selfharming) I did text he to reassure that everything was okay between us.

Im not sure what to do, I didnt want it to end it but I dont want to "send him over the edge"

Sueinbirmingham

Just found this thread. I'm also bipolar. I've been bipolar for a long time. I worked full time for many years, but I'm not working at the moment. For some years now, the everyday stuff has been difficult. You know how it is, better times, worse times.

I function best when I just potter along doing a bit of voluntary work here and there. Sometimes even my voluntary work gets too much and I just focus on eating and sleeping plus helping to care for someone (who, fortunately, just needs some help from his family, not full-time care).

I get some benefits and I have a little pension that I'm deferring, so I don't have to worry about money, but I'm very worried about welfare reforms. I don't think I'll get the new PIP because I'm sure that people like us with mental health problems will be high up on the government's list for people to remove DLA/PIP from when they change the criteria.

I see that there are people on this thread without bipolar but asking about it. Over the years, I have met many, many people with bipolar online and off, and I think that one thing I can say is that apart from the fact that we all have moods that go too high, there's nothing else that every bipolar person has in common. For example, some people only go manic, never depressed. (Though everyone with bipolar gets at least hypomanic.) Quite a few of us get psychotic, but not everyone does, and those that do get psychotic in different ways.

It doesn't even have the same life impact on all of us or even the same life impact on an individual throughout their life. It wrecked part of my childhood and early adulthood but I spent many years working in a high-pressure professional job before falling apart again.

In the perfect world, I'd like to mix and match temporary part time work and benefits, drifting on and off as my mental health varies.

One of the big ironies I find with benefits is that I get money for care but it's difficult to get care and you certainly can't get the amount of care you need formally with the amount of money you get, so most of my care is done by friends, relatives, volunteers.

Some days I feel trapped inside my mind. I go online and the tears are pouring down my face and I'm struggling to cope with the world and I think "Nobody can see this. Any minute now, someone is going to tell me that if I can go online I could work."

Indie_Kid

Sueinbirmingham wrote: »

I see that there are people on this thread without bipolar but asking about it. Over the years, I have met many, many people with bipolar online and off, and I think that one thing I can say is that apart from the fact that we all have moods that go too high, there's nothing else that every bipolar person has in common. For example, some people only go manic, never depressed. (Though everyone with bipolar gets at least hypomanic.) Quite a few of us get psychotic, but not everyone does, and those that do get psychotic in different ways.

It doesn't even have the same life impact on all of us or even the same life impact on an individual throughout their life. It wrecked part of my childhood and early adulthood but I spent many years working in a high-pressure professional job before falling apart again.

This makes sense I guess.

de1amo

İts hard to see anyone getting PİP/dla if a person with bi polar doesnt because its one of the 'major'mental illnesses. People bumble along with it but if they are force people to work the admission rates will sore in the mental health hospitals and cost the state a fortune--its a fools errand --thats the financial cost but upset to people's lives wil be many fold that--

Sueinbirmingham

I think that there are some pointers.

The government said when it announced the 20% cutback to DLA (before it wanted to introduce PIP) that it wanted to do something about the fact that people were getting DLA who weren't originally intended to get it. It was originally intended for people with physical impairments and it was only paid to people with mental illness after a series of legal precedents.

When you see the changes from IB to ESA criteria relating to mental illness, and then the changes from the current WCA to the new WCA that's due to come into force in the spring, there's been a move towards legislating away mental illness in relation to sickness benefits.

Then when you look at the trend in mental health care over the last ten years, there has been the big drive towards "social inclusion" and the closure of day centres. We're supposed to get our support in the community by going to work, not going to a day centre.

In academic circles and moving across into psychiatry has been the ever-growing notion of recovery not as getting better but as getting on with your life, but between the lines this is increasingly implying going mainstream with the rest of society.

Various charities and interested bodies are pushing the anti-stigma message which has included high-profile working people saying "look at me, I'm bipolar but I'm a senior manager/politician/celebrity, so just because I'm bipolar doesn't mean I can't do everything you can".

All this suggests to me a general consensus between politicians, academics, service providers and mental health charities that if we get mentally ill, we just need a bit of acute care, a few pills and we can get out there and get on with our lives like everyone else.

For some people, this is true. Unfortunately for some of us, it's not that simple.

In theory you're right about hospital admissions, but where are the beds? Round here, they've rebuilt hospitals using PFI and in order to afford the new units, they've reduced the number of beds. They've overflowed into respite houses, but places in them are like golddust. Obviously, the next line of support is state-funded places in private mental hospitals, and I notice that there doesn't seem to be a shortage of those, but where's the funding?

I think that this could all go very badly wrong, and I think that you're right about the financial cost and the upset to people's lives, but it could be quite a few years before it reaches the sort of crisis point at which something is done about it.

If that all sounds like a rather negative analysis of it, it's partly because I'm low at the moment, but it's also the result of a lot of thought.

Indie_Kid

Sueinbirmingham wrote: »

When you see the changes from IB to ESA criteria relating to mental illness, and then the changes from the current WCA to the new WCA that's due to come into force in the spring, there's been a move towards legislating away mental illness in relation to sickness benefits.

In other words, they're burying their heads in the sand and claiming there's no mental health issues.

Various charities and interested bodies are pushing the anti-stigma message which has included high-profile working people saying "look at me, I'm bipolar but I'm a senior manager/politician/celebrity, so just because I'm bipolar doesn't mean I can't do everything you can".

Which has I think, also lead to "well, they have bipolar and work, so why can't you?" I have a relative who works and has bipolar; but she's stable for now. Yet, I have a friend whose wife has been sectioned twice in about a year because of how unstable she is.

de1amo

İf there arent the beds and this system goes ahead--i feel it wont be in the future an influx happens it will be pretty immediate. --what then, do we live in a society where very ill people are left to their own devices to hope for care at home or on the streets--will Britain then be a 3rd world society?