Depression Learning

Amnesia about BP in family

Question:

They’re jsut taking their vacations on the river denial. As I’ve said, my family still calls it "My little problem."  Yep!  A little problem that was putting me in the psych hospital up to 4 times per year. As long as my meds work they seem to think I’m cured.  If things get bad I just don’t tell them.  Doesn’t change them one bit.  Acceptance is a great thing to learn. c

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I just had a visit from my parents.  I was talking to my mother: she said to me "I think it’s so hard that you & your sister have got manic depression, and my mother had it, but none of my generation got it." But, I said – your sister G was hospitalised for depression.  "Oh, that’s because her husband had an affair."  Yes, but she was depressed enough that she needed hospitalisation.  And then in her early seventies, G had two manic episodes. And my mother said – "I don’t remember that." !!!??!  I got the news about G’s manic breaks from my mother.  She told me how they had put G on lithium.  I sent G an email, saying I was sorry to hear, it’s a tough thing to accept the diagnosis, but it’s important to take the mood stabilisers & you can have a good life.  Then G stopped taking her lithium & had an episode where she believed she was receiving telepathic emails from me.   Classic stuff.  - I heard about THIS from my mother too.  – And my mother has forgotten all this?? And for that matter, my sister K had a manic break when she was c. 21 – was hospitalised, they put her on lithium, then she went and lived with my parents for some months.  She stopped taking lithium and survived unmedicated for some 15 years, until two years ago when depression and mixed manic states got too much for her to handle.  I recommended she should go onto a mood stabiliser – said something like "Bipolar disorder can get worse without medication,"  and she said – "I don’t have bipolar disorder,"  and my mother said, "We never knew K had bipolar disorder."   ???!!!?  How could they have avoided knowing? (K has come to terms with it now, tried depakote and is now doing well on lithium.  She wishes she had gone onto medication years ago). But what IS it with this family amnesia / wilful blindness?  Can people really block out knowledge that they don’t want to have?

Response:

I can relate to this. I KNOW there are living family members who are undiagnosed BP’s (but not as bad as me), and nobody will face it. My BP gets ignored since the meds control it so well.

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I just had a visit from my parents.  I was talking to my mother: she said to me "I think it’s so hard that you & your sister have got manic depression, and my mother had it, but none of my generation got it." But, I said – your sister G was hospitalised for depression.  "Oh, that’s because her husband had an affair."  Yes, but she was depressed enough that she needed hospitalisation.  And then in her early seventies, G had two manic episodes. And my mother said – "I don’t remember that." !!!??!  I got the news about G’s manic breaks from my mother.  She told me how they had put G on lithium.  I sent G an email, saying I was sorry to hear, it’s a tough thing to accept the diagnosis, but it’s important to take the mood stabilisers & you can have a good life.  Then G stopped taking her lithium & had an episode where she believed she was receiving telepathic emails from me.   Classic stuff.  - I heard about THIS from my mother too.  – And my mother has forgotten all this?? And for that matter, my sister K had a manic break when she was c. 21 – was hospitalised, they put her on lithium, then she went and lived with my parents for some months.  She stopped taking lithium and survived unmedicated for some 15 years, until two years ago when depression and mixed manic states got too much for her to handle.  I recommended she should go onto a mood stabiliser – said something like "Bipolar disorder can get worse without medication,"  and she said – "I don’t have bipolar disorder,"  and my mother said, "We never knew K had bipolar disorder."   ???!!!?  How could they have avoided knowing? (K has come to terms with it now, tried depakote and is now doing well on lithium.  She wishes she had gone onto medication years ago). But what IS it with this family amnesia / wilful blindness?  Can people really block out knowledge that they don’t want to have?

Response:

I just had a visit from my parents.  I was talking to my mother: she said to me "I think it’s so hard that you & your sister have got manic depression, and my mother had it, but none of my generation got it."

Oh, sounds like your mother and mine are riding as queens on the same barge down the river Denial!  My mother can’t comprehend why I am bipolar and a nephew are bipolar and she will tell you she thinks that her four sisters are all bipolar but won’t admit she is bipolar herself.  Never mind that I think two of her four sisters are bipolar and the other two sisters were just depressed. And my mother said – "I don’t remember that."

Oh but mine says that she knows all about bipolar disorder from the newsgroup she had an influence in creating as well as done all the research and stuff to help me and my nephew.  I was like "what the fuck?" at the big family gathering and pointed out that it was *I* who helped put together a moderated newsgroup and it was *I* who helps run the group, not her.  And when I started quizzing her about different meds, she just told me that she can’t remember everything and told me to drop it.  My final comment was "no wonder (nephew)’s meds were so damn screwy because you don’t know your head from your ass when it comes to bipolars."  My grandfather couldn’t stop laughing at that one and my grandparents started coming to me when dealing with an aunt to get her diagnosed. But what IS it with this family amnesia / wilful blindness?  Can people really block out knowledge that they don’t want to have?

I can tell you that with my mother, if it doesn’t make her look good to other people, she will forget about it or twist things around to where she looks good or she did this when she didn’t.  It’s like she wants to impress people.  And what is sad is that many people who know her are fully aware of this, and she will deny it until the day she dies tha she doesn’t do it.  It’s even funnier when you realize that the non family things are what has brought it to everyone’s attention, and she still just doesn’t get it. I learned to live with it a long time ago and don’t trust anything she says about something because I can bet that it’s not exactly true or even close to the truth.

Response:

I just had a visit from my parents.  I was talking to my mother: she said to me "I think it’s so hard that you & your sister have got manic depression, and my mother had it, but none of my generation got it." But, I said – your sister G was hospitalised for depression.  "Oh, that’s because her husband had an affair."  Yes, but she was depressed enough that she needed hospitalisation.  And then in her early seventies, G had two manic episodes. And my mother said – "I don’t remember that." !!!??!  I got the news about G’s manic breaks from my mother.  She told me how they had put G on lithium.  I sent G an email, saying I was sorry to hear, it’s a tough thing to accept the diagnosis, but it’s important to take the mood stabilisers & you can have a good life.  Then G stopped taking her lithium & had an episode where she believed she was receiving telepathic emails from me.   Classic stuff.  - I heard about THIS from my mother too.  – And my mother has forgotten all this?? And for that matter, my sister K had a manic break when she was c. 21 – was hospitalised, they put her on lithium, then she went and lived with my parents for some months.  She stopped taking lithium and survived unmedicated for some 15 years, until two years ago when depression and mixed manic states got too much for her to handle.  I recommended she should go onto a mood stabiliser – said something like "Bipolar disorder can get worse without medication,"  and she said – "I don’t have bipolar disorder,"  and my mother said, "We never knew K had bipolar disorder."   ???!!!?  How could they have avoided knowing? (K has come to terms with it now, tried depakote and is now doing well on lithium.  She wishes she had gone onto medication years ago). But what IS it with this family amnesia / wilful blindness?  Can people really block out knowledge that they don’t want to have?

Response:

My father was in denial about his bipolar illness for 50 years (right up till his death).  From the time he was 20 he would need to go into a phosp every 3-4 years with major depression, when nothing would help him except ECT.  When he died he had over 300 suits hanging in his closet that he bought when manic.  Yet till the very end, he would say he had some problems, but he did not have bipolar disease. The only way I could understand his level of denial was to think of all the severe alcoholics/drug addicts who don’t admit that they have a problem. Perhaps denial is even stronger in people who grew up at a time when there was even more stigma about mental illness ?   – Ellen

Response:

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