BPDRecovery.com: Forums

I've just started reading Bloodletting by Victoria Leatham, which is a memoir of self-harm and recovery. The book has a preface by a professor which says:


I'd never heard of this before and I was just wondering if anyone else had?

I've heard that bipolar in children doesn't have the same pattern as in adults. Which seems to be pretty much saying the same thing -- that bipolar doesn't start off with the normal bipolar pattern. Although, I'm assuming that childhood bipolar was recognized as such by looking at what people with bipolar were like as children.

I've not heard that before but I haven't followed much in the way of bipolar texts.

That said, if it can present in these more seemingly-mild ways initially before settling into a "more orthodox pattern" does that mean to imply that treatment for the eating, obsessive and self-injurious behaviours would stave off the more orthodox patterns later? If so, that's pretty astounding.

Oh, you know what, I take it back. I did the MMPI a while ago (about 10 years ago) and that pdoc said I had borderline personality disorder and I asked what that meant and he told me "it's like a milder form of bipolar disorder" so I guess it kind of makes sense, what Leatham said.

so many drs disagree on what is what. it wasnt long ago they denied it could exist in children at all. of course they never had one and raised a kid who was bipolar or they would have known better. doh.

i disagree bpd is a thing like bipolar. 2 diff causes, very diff behaviors...totally diff everything.

since my daughter also has aspergers --(i am gonna quit asking any T or dr anymore about anything, i dont want to know) i post on a board for that. and lo and behold, half her behavior was so common with aspie kids. funny, when i saw her preschool testing i had done when she was 3, i had asked them if she was autistic and they said no. hahaha. rightttttttttt.

depression can present very diff in children than adults. so does bipolar mania. . as such you get labels as separation anxiety, ADD, defiant disorder, blah blah when its all bipolar based.

since i have a 31 yr old daughter with bipolar 1, rapid mixed cycles, i think i can address this with a bit of experience.

it can present atypically as can everything else with kids, but it is in no way milder, trust me there. oh hell no. eating problems, school, no sleeping, violent outbursts, crying, drug use, it can mask the underlying core problem.

and of course find a dr who knows anything is a task to begin with. i never realized how many stupid people were out there with MD after their name. another typical thing us parents find out...every one will tell ya that also.

life magazine had a great issue way back on childhood bipolar. i could nod my head at all of it...and usually you can tell your kid is bipolar by age 2, if not before.

im not sure what they consider "orthodox" patterns, as there are at least 3 types of bipolar, and each is diff than the other in ways.

anyways. my 2 cents. fwiw.

Jody - when I first heard that bipolar and BPD can look similar, I didn't believe it either. I thought they were so different - but then I was thinking of classic bipolar I with definite episodes of depression and mania and periods of being well in between. Is that what your daughter's illness is like?

I've since learned that some types of bipolar can look a lot different (just as different people with BPD can have very different symptoms, I guess). My partner was originally dxed with BPD, then it was changed to bipolar II, now they're saying she has some BPD traits as well. There's a great article here that explains the similarities and differences and what a diagnosis actually is in the first place.

Doctors do disagree and there are no black and white answers! I find it very confusing at times. I personally don't believe that each mental health dx is necessarily a separate "illness", I think they are more ways of categorising people's problems which can be used as a guide to treatment.

Anyway, back to the book. The author has bipolar II but now I've read the whole book, I'm a bit baffled by that comment in the preface (which wasn't written by the author, btw). Leatham did mention having had anorexia as a teenager, but she had episodes of depression/hypomania and was dxed with bipolar not long after she started self-harming, and her obsessive behaviours didn't appear until years later. So what the professor says may be true, but it doesn't seem to relate much to the author's experiences.

There wasn't any suggestion that treating the self-harm, eating problems etc would prevent someone from developing more classic bipolar symptoms later in life. That would be interesting to know.

I am thinking of what I have been doing to treat my son though! It is hoped that by using parenting strategies we can help him learn to control his bip symptoms. There are days when I wish we had medication, but so far we are opting for what is known as therapeutic parenting. This seems to be a pretty new approach though. As jody said they aren't quick to dx bip in children, and it also mimics ADHD in many ways. I am starting to see how many of the disorders just seem to be on a spectrum. The more symptoms tie to a disorder the more likely the dx.

I do find it helpful to think of things as being on a spectrum. I love the paint analogy here. Sometimes paint is obviously blue or purple, but what do you do when it's somewhere in between? Different pdocs/Ts are bound to have different opinions.

Did you see the Stephen Fry documentary on bipolar? There were a couple of young kids in that and it scared me how much medication they were on, when bipolar can be so difficult to dx at such a young age. Good luck with the therapeutic parenting.

Echoes, I like that link. I've become familiar with the idea of a spectrum in mental health issues from learning about the autism spectrum. It's actually pretty common there to talk about a spectrum, and it makes sense to me personally to see it that way, being someone who's on the edge of that spectrum -- I have traits and have learned about myself from learning about autism and Asperger's, but I really lay claim to a label.

I hadn't seen that idea applied to BPD before (though I'm familiar with it having plenty of variation), but I think it makes sense. And I like the paint analogy, which was also new to me.